Profs tell students “no debate” on climate. Unbelievers should “Drop out”

Welcome to Higher Education 2016: Whatever you do, don’t ask questions, don’t ask for evidence, and don’t discuss your doubts on class forums.  “We will not, at any time, debate the science of climate change’” All outside sources for research must be peer reviewed by the IPCC.

Students in the University of Colorado expressed concern about the first online lecture in “Medical Humanities in the Digital Age”. All three Professors together replied via email that students should Drop class if they dispute man-made climate change

“The point of departure for this course is based on the scientific premise that human induced climate change is valid and occurring. We will not, at any time, debate the science of climate change, nor will the ‘other side’ of the climate change debate be taught or discussed in this course,” states the email, a copy of which was provided to The College Fix by a student in the course.

“Opening up a debate that 98% of climate scientists unequivocally agree to be a non-debate would detract from the central concerns of environment and health addressed in this course,” the professors’ email continued.

“… If you believe this premise to be an issue for you, we respectfully ask that you do not take this course…  — signed Professors, Rebecca Laroche, Wendy Haggren and Eileen Skahill

The ban included discussions on online forums among students (we wouldn’t want people polluting the thoughts of believers, would we?) And no thoughts or arguments outside of those approved by an unelected, unaccountable foreign committee shall be considered.

 Moreover, students who choose to use outside sources for research during their time in the course may select only those that have been peer-reviewed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the email states.

Normal students don’t ask questions, they feel guilt and shame:

An activity assigned within that section instructs students to take a test to measure their own carbon footprint. The purpose, reads the syllabus, “is not to create guilt or shame, though those emotions are entirely common.”

Read the whole post

h/t Pat and Drudge

 

Some students who hunger for knowledge,
Trust Professors to guide them through college,
Must from courses opt out,
If they climate-change doubt,
Or not dogma of warming acknowledge.

 — Ruairi

8.9 out of 10 based on 116 ratings

275 comments to Profs tell students “no debate” on climate. Unbelievers should “Drop out”

  • #
    tom0mason

    They should debate how science progresses through free and open debate.

    541

    • #
      OriginalSteve

      One of the hallmarks of a cult is that questioning is not allowed.

      Ergo, Klimat Chang is a religious cult.

      502

      • #
        Olaf Koenders

        Yep. Train them all to be taxpaying automatons, because “consensus”. Eye-rolling will have you sent to the Gulag. Imagine if you required that course for your career and couldn’t take it because it’s indoctrination barring fact. I can’t wait for the class-action lawsuits to follow the AGW crash and burn.

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        • #
          OriginalSteve

          Yep. I often wonder out loud when the Klimat Nuremberg Trials will start…..

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          • #
            Ted O'Brien.

            If 97%, (here it has grown to 98%), is the answer, what was the question?

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            • #
              Sceptical Sam

              At the University of Colorado you are not permitted to point that error out, Ted.

              You need to withdraw immediately or face the consequences (which are what I wonder?).

              130

              • #
                Leonard Lane

                Colorado, especially eastern Colorado, has been racing left since the days of John Denver’s song “Rocky Mountain High”.
                The governor of Colorado is a bar tender/owner.
                Colorado has legal marijuana for anyone who wants it. Those of age buy it and give/sell depending what they are after to kids as young as those in elementary school.
                Western Colorado is still a good place, mostly, but the political power is in Eastern Colorado and Interstate 70 is a drug smuggling route from the east to the west in Colorado. I am afraid Colorado is going the way of most states and cities governed by Democrats/Progressives/Socialists/Communists, i.e. California, Michigan, Baltimore, Chicago, etc.

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              • #
                Owen Morgan

                Easy: you get blacklisted and you get suspended, I imagine. Since you’re suspended, you can’t be attending the obligatory lectures and tutorials, however pointless they may be, or submitting required course work. That means, eventually, that you will get no degree, or one that’s locked firmly in the basement. Since, these days (and not just in the United States), quite a lot of degrees can be simultaneously worthless and eye-wateringly expensive, getting kicked out of the college altogether may be preferable, although it doesn’t look great on one’s CV. I assume they impose suspension, rather than expulsion, because they want the student’s wonga, even if they don’t want the student.

                60

              • #
                Sane Canadian

                Well, this would qualify as academic misconduct so FIRE all three of them. Have to wonder, in their classes, is climate change sexist as well?

                00

            • #
              Owen Morgan

              Given the state of American academia, they’ll have that up to 104% in no time.

              210

        • #
          Tom O

          Hey, at least they raised the percentage! Notice it ISN’T the familiar 97%, it has risen, with so many climate scientists changing their position to the non-AGW side, to 98%! I’ll let you figure out how that happened, because I couldn’t.

          60

      • #
        Rod Stuart

        Environmentalism, in the form of Climate Change Alarmism, is a religion.
        Note the structural and behavioural similarities:
        ► Monk ==> Scientist – They provide the articles of the faith
        ► Priest ==> Journalist – They spread the faith and convert the faithful
        ► Sin ==> Carbon Emissions – How an individual’s acts hurt the community
        ► Salvation ==> Energy Reduction – How individuals can redeem themselves
        ► Indulgences ==> Carbon Credits – Buying forgiveness
        ► Church ==> IPCC – Organisation in charge of the faith
        ► Bible ==> IPCC Reports – Official guidebook to the faith
        ► Evangelists ==> Activists – Aggressive promoters of the faith
        ► God ==> Gaia – The “superhuman” who will “judge” us
        ► Lovelock ==> Judas – The betrayer of the faith, the apostate
        ► Hell ==> 2 degree temperature rise – Hot/cold/dry/wet whatever is bad will be worse
        ► Signs from God ==> Any Storm or Drought
        ► Tithes ==> Carbon Taxes – Every religion needs money
        ► Garden of Eden ==> Pre-industrial world
        ► The Serpent ==> Fossil fuel companies
        ► The Apple ==> Burning Things
        ► Rituals ==> Erecting wind farms, ‘burning’ deniers, ‘stoning’ apostates.
        ► Warming ==> God …invisible, undetectable, unknowable but somehow universal
        ► Unbelievers ==> Deniers – to be detested and cast into darkness
        ► The Devil ==> Big Oil – The embodiment of Evil
        ► Demons ==> Sceptics, in the pay of Big Oil, vital to cast them out.
        ► Evil Spirit ==> Greenhouse Gas – it cannot be seen nor touched, but its effects can be felt, even physically.

        130

      • #
        delcon2

        This is the way the “Brown Shirts” acted in 1932 when Hitler was an “Up and Coming”Nazi,before WW2.History is repeating itself,sadly.
        The new fascism of the left is filled with violence and hate.
        If leftists didn’t have hypocrisy they’d have nothing much to offer.

        90

    • #
      me@home

      These idiots confirm their ignorance with the following statement:

      “Moreover, students who choose to use outside sources for research during their time in the course may select only those that have been peer-reviewed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the email states.”

      Where did they get the idea that the IPCC peer-reviews anything?

      290

      • #
        Mark Fraser

        I wonder if these pretenders are aware that a large percentage of IPCC “scientific” documents are gray literature from Greenpeace, World Wildlife and other activist groups. Seems a shame to impose censorship on such a rich array of enterically processed fodder for the malleable students’ minds.

        270

      • #
        Ted O'Brien.

        me@home. Can this be real, or could it be that they are stringing us on?

        How much money have they got?

        40

        • #
          Owen Morgan

          Remember that Tom Steyer waved goodbye to about thirty million dollars, during the Congressional elections, two years ago. Basically, he lost every cent. The only victorious candidates he supported were the ones expected to win, anyway. So, he wasted money, but he can afford to do that every time there’s an election in the US. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have thirty million dollars (Aus/US/NZ/Can/Belize) to burn. The likes of Steyer and Zuckerberg and Soros really do.

          40

      • #
        OriginalSteve

        I think this nonsense could be challenged on restriction of academic freedom, as very fertile a starting point….

        Hallmarks of a cult :

        – the cult says that they alone possess “the truth”
        – the cult strongly controls what the cult members do, read and experience
        – the cult try to stop cult members from communicating/exchanging ideas with those outside the cult
        – the cult trys to shield members from any outside infulences
        – there are usually at least one charismatic person/group/inner circle who is head of the cult
        – all descisions need to go through this peron/group/inner circle
        – cult members feel a strong emotional bond ( through programming ) and depndency on the
        leader/group/inner circle ( witness how emotive Klimat Chang flunkies get when questioned….)

        Ergo, it seems Klimat Chang is a destructive cult……

        61

    • #
      Roy Hogue

      They should debate how science progresses through free and open debate.

      The thought police have already won that debate in numerous places. Free and open is not open for business. And unfortunately those places are in all the halls of power around the world where one dare not commit such heresy as to buck the party line.

      It could be stopped in Colorado’s classrooms if for just one semester, no one enrolled in the course. Death by being ignored is anathema to a college professor. They live or die by how much attention they get from just about everywhere and everyone. Be important or be irrelevant. Publish or perish, have a full classroom or perish. I know what the pressure is. I’ve been there. So the students do have the power if they would dare to take it.

      73

      • #
        Owen Morgan

        They haven’t won “that debate”. They’ve been frantically running away from anything resembling a debate. Is it eight years since Climategate? How long ago did Mark Steyn challenge Mann to provide his evidence?

        81

        • #
          OriginalSteve

          GOod – keep asking for a debate…they will implode eventually….or gone at you with bared teeth , in which case self defence is permissible… 🙂

          51

        • #
          Roy Hogue

          They haven’t won “that debate”.

          Yet look at the power they have. A teacher in a Colorado University classroom can tell students that if you don’t agree with me you can drop the course, the thinly veiled threat being, get a failing grade if you don’t get out. It’s tantamount to saying, “Go to hell if you don’t agree with me.” How fair and noble of them to give a warning as if they were doing the students a favor.

          They need not hold any real debate, they just dictate and get away with it. I would love to see some real debate. But in the meantime, they have won the debate simply by saying they know what’s happening and there is no more debate possible, the jury has returned the verdict on climate change and that’s that. Thus do they walk all over us. And who really puts up a worthwhile fight? Not many. Not nearly enough to matter. The power is in their hands and they know it and they use it. We have only the power to call attention to the Emperor’s nakedness and hope for the best. And if we win in some cases and get something changed back toward sanity, more evil pops up to replace it.

          I suspect the probability of seeing this global warming BS actually debated seriously on the merit of the “evidence” supporting it is somewhere between zero and minus infinity. It ain’t gonna happen.

          And even if there was honest debate, the real operation going on here isn’t about climate change, it’s about money and control of the world’s population, in short, it’s about what politics is always about, POWER, who will have power and who will not. If a debate were held and the skeptics were judged the winner by even an overwhelming margin, would you expect the UN, the IPCC and Agenda 2030 to go away? I wouldn’t. They would switch to some other argument to justify what they’re doing.

          Five years ago I didn’t see global warming being discussed on TV, much less were products being sold on the basis of their carbon footprint. Today that’s exactly what’s happening. I’ve seen business warned to go green (which no one defines) or die. And that’s what will happen, you must sell what the buyer wants and will pay for or you don’t sell. And the buyer now wants “green”.

          So have they won the debate? My answer is yes.

          23

          • #
            Roy Hogue

            And there once more is that cowardly red thumb. You see, the problem is that the situation is very much as I described it. If someone could counter my opinion of it, I think they would — they certainly should instead of being silent. But things being the way they are, I hit a nerve and the kneejerk is toward the red thumb. I don’t know whose it is, skeptic or AGW pusher. But please believe this, I am not going to budge an inch from speaking what I see is really going on. The picture is there. I just bother to take a good hard look and ask myself, what does this mean instead of trying to fool myself that they haven’t won the debate when the evidence is so clear that it’s obvious, they have indeed won.

            I never say anything to get recognition. What I say is an honest belief or opinion or sometimes humor. But this isn’t funny. And I always sign my name to what I say so you know who said it. And I’m too old to be intimidated and too wise to believe it’s a good idea to stay silent.

            22

    • #
      Albert

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYq5da6MN_M
      This is a good site with lots of information that uses raw data

      20

  • #
    Mari C

    Wowser. Do not think for yourself, toe the line, or fail. Sheesh. What happened to the good old days of “Question Authority!” and “Don’t trust anyone over ” ? We’ve certainly done an about-face here in the USofA.

    The again, Colorado is about as insane as California, just fewer brown people there. Except for the sun-tanned ski bunnies.

    Oh, speaking of USofA sillies,this just in – http://www.nbcnews.com/news/weather/severe-weather-looms-florida-north-carolina-hawaii-n640491 – it’s a normal seasonal tropical depression as far as I can tell. I wonder if this storm will be discussed in the class, it’s obviously CAGW bait, and I think the dear leaders in Fla need might be drinking a tad too much cool-aid.

    Another view at WP, where at least a mention of all’s normal, just more so, is made by the Hurricane Center folks

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/08/31/tropical-depression-nine-could-trigger-dangerous-storm-surge-and-flooding-in-florida/

    “On Wednesday, a tropical storm warning, hurricane watch and storm surge warning are in effect for the Big Bend area of Florida. Though the storm appears to be strengthening this morning, the Hurricane Center believes this is just a temporary flare-up of thunderstorm activity, as opposed to organized intensification. The storm is running out of time to intensify much before it makes landfall, though it could still strengthen just before landfall.”

    283

    • #
      Mari C

      Ahhh, I left a headline out. http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2016/08/31/tropical-depression-storm-florida-emergency-hawaii-hurricanes/89644626/

      Emergency! Send the Colorado Kids to study the medical inhumanities! NO DEBATE!

      192

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Above the entrance way, of the old Royal Society building in London, were engraved the words, “Question Everything”. It became quite fashionable for students to climb up periodically, and write “Why?”, underneath.

      Students do not get a higher education today. They get advanced indoctrination, instead.

      Does any body know if the University of Colorado issues “Little Red Books” to all their students? They were quite fashionable for a time, in Indochina, and they proved to be a reasonable surrogate for actually thinking.

      472

      • #
        OriginalSteve

        Well yes, but there was a small problem of where to bury the bodies of dissenters….

        131

      • #

        but surely the students who climb up to write “why” are getting a higher education?

        111

      • #

        I wonder how long it will be before Catholic Priests by decree of CEO Francis, are employed weekly to ritually expurgate lecture theaters of Doubt-Demons? 🙂

        Could you imagine a priest dressed all in green, with an incense burner and a bottle of U.N.Holy water (blessed by Ban Ki Moon and CEO Francis), exorcising a Doubt-Demon from the student who was just that little bit too outspoken and skeptical? … or at least the weekly student who was deemed by peer review to be just that little bit less irreverent?

        All this would occur whilst everyone in the lecture theater bows down to worship the Michael Mann Hockey Stick ICON on the projector screen, whilst waving real hockey sticks over their heads in praise like palm leaves, whilst chanting “Forgive my Carbon sins, oh Mother of All” … maybe including some self flagellation for extra dramatic effect!

        Those students who don’t submit weekly to ritual submission would get the option of an exorcism, or they would be run out of University by a vociferous mob of believers waving hockey sticks and chanting:

        97%…98%…99%…100%…CONSENSUS…CONSENSUS…CONSENSUS…

        Not to mention the ability for an on-campus Inquisition staffed by the biggest true Believers, headed by the student president, in a door numbered Room 101 next to the infirmary in case of interrogatory over-zealousness.

        That would make a really good political cartoon … call it Dark Ages 2.0

        120

        • #
          tom0mason

          No one expects the UN Inquisition!

          Fetch the comfy chair!

          (For all the youngsters there it’s a reference to an old Monty Python joke.)

          50

        • #
          OriginalSteve

          I fear the RCC becoming intertwined with the Klimat Chang cult, but that said, the RCC has been for over 1500 years by its actions, an anti-biblical & pagan entity, not christian, so it would see no issue with banding together with an earth based pagan religion. And the reality is, it loves power,the more the better, is unreformable ( what Christians call “an unteachable spirit” ) , ergo….

          30

          • #
            Sceptical Sam

            The Roman Catholic Church needs to concentrate its efforts on cleaning up its own degraded, paedophilic, corrupt and abusive organization before it can ever be regarded as an authority on anything.

            30

        • #
          Roy Hogue

          It’s surely no mystery to anyone that the Catholic Church has been a subscriber to the theory that if you teach the child the way he should go he will not depart from that way for the rest of his life. I may not have remembered the exact words of the theory but the essential truth is there in 2 ways; 1) they do subscribe to that and they do it and; 2) indeed large numbers of Catholics do not stray from what they are taught that I know of. Some always will… …some will bend the rules too, at least in regard to church doctrine about contraception as a previous Pope lamented but otherwise quite steadfast.

          That is why the Catholic Church runs Catholic Schools — to be able to teach the children of Catholics how to be Catholic. They do no noteworthy evangelism that I know of so they grow only by indoctrinating their children, which has seen them grow very large and influential. And I’m not criticising the Catholic Church here, just stating what I think is fact. And I think it might behoove the rest of us to catch on to the truth of that and take advantage of the opportunity to teach our children a lot better than the indoctrination they may get a little later in their education and the rest of their lives while we still have some chance of succeeding.

          31

          • #
            Roy Hogue

            Just think of how different things could be today if, after WWII, schools all had begun to teach openly and honestly about the need for skepticism, had taught honestly about capitalism’s only too obvious advantages, had taught about the need to pay attention to what government is doing, about the need to be very careful who you pick as heros and examples to follow. And above all, the value of working for what you get, the value of setting high standards for yourself. A big list…

            And how much better if that had begun decades earlier and never been let languish in neglect?

            For the most part, children really will live up to the standard we set for them. And as adults they will follow through.

            31

  • #
    BruceC

    If I’m not mistaken, the IPCC doesn’t actually do ANY peer-reviewing.

    461

    • #
      Grant (NZ)

      That was news to me too. It really does show that there are people who have absolutely no idea what peer review is about.

      And how could the IPCC conduct peer review when it is totally without peer.

      302

      • #
        ExWarmist

        Grant (NZ) wrote.

        IPCC conduct peer review when it is totally without peer

        For some strange reason “Mexican Drug Cartels” sprang to mind when I read your sentence.

        Inexplicable, I know.

        191

        • #
          OriginalSteve

          Perfectly rational I’d have thought….”Costa Nostra” is also a concept that could apply….

          130

        • #
          Bulldust

          I was thinking more like Bernie Madoff meets Scientology, but yeah…

          90

        • #

          Don’t forget the Curia at Vatican City, which is well within the same sphere of ‘global institution with election and appointment behind closed doors’. The Curia are also managed by an appointee who can issue infallible decrees regarding true doctrine!

          At least Cosa Nostra traffic in a physically usable substance bought by personal choice, regardless of its nature, whereas the Curia and IPCC just force feed doctrines, ideas, and infallibility down peoples’ throats; the latter now by using globalized Government enforcement!

          I think this makes Cosa Nostra nowhere near the level of an IPCC peer. In fact, even the Vatican Curia might be on a step below the IPCC’s pedestal. Maybe they are without peer, unless we include the Bank For International Settlements in Basel into the mix, with their infallible remonstrations on ‘correct’ interest rates and national credit ratings decided on behind closed doors.

          41

      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        I did a pier review for Chris Turney, once. The pier looked fine to me, and it didn’t fall down, or anything. But there must have been something wrong with it, because he never came back.

        110

        • #
          Graeme No.3

          Unfortunately he did come back, at our expense ( paid out by our? Government for reasons beyond me ).

          70

        • #
          sophocles

          … and of course it had no ice?

          10

        • #
          Roy Hogue

          The pier looked fine to me, and it didn’t fall down, or anything. But there must have been something wrong with it, because he never came back.

          RW,

          Perhaps the pier was undermined by a storm after you reviewed it?

          01

    • #
      Craig

      That’s what I thought when I read about ‘IPCC peer review’. Maybe they ment peer reviewed literature that is used by the IPCC? Complete bollocks and loses any credibility if you can’t get the basic descriptors right.

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      • #
        Sceptical Sam

        But Craig you know, as well as all the rest of us, that the IPCC only uses material that meets its requirement of supporting its ideology. It reviews material to ensure it complies. If it does, it uses it. That’s IPCC peer review process. Remember?

        Any old propaganda piece will do, so long as it says what the IPCC wants to hear. Just think: Himalayan glaciers etc. It doesn’t even need to pretend to be “academic”.

        120

      • #

        We can use the peer with jetties and bollards to crush this utter nonsense upon the bollards? Den wat? For you my as fine special friend! we hab opportunity to send bollard puke to da Netherlands as fine fjord food! Invest quickly!

        41

  • #
    Mari C

    Left off the headline I meant to add above. http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2016/08/31/tropical-depression-storm-florida-emergency-hawaii-hurricanes/89644626/

    Colorado could sent it’s medical humanities class down to Florida to study the medical inhumanity of a bad thunderstorm turned into state emergency due to hysterical headlines.

    131

  • #
    richard ilfeld

    We aren’t panicking in Florida. We are laughing at the national media.
    The hurricane shutters are still in the garage – they don’t go up for a mere TD.
    Our emergency folks in Florida are, in general, both practiced & competent.
    Folks who see frequent storms learn to handle storms.
    Folks who see frequent fires learn to handle fires.
    Folks in latitudes with severe winters learn to handle severe winter.

    Washington, DC has none of the above, & can’t handle anything.

    470

    • #

      I thought all you people in Florida were supposed to be under 20ft of Atlantic ocean by now?

      60

      • #
        tom0mason

        EyesWideOpen

        In the new reality it has already happened, new history is being written as we converse.

        Thankfully most of Florida was saved by the swift and measured action of the godlike Obama when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) where sent in and stabilized the situation.

        Look it up, I sure mention was made of it and inserted into Newspeak’s official record.

        40

        • #

          Yes, I’m sure they will accurately capture the sea level recording when the storm surge was at its highest, and continue to parrot it for decades as the 2016 sea level highs for Florida (high, and average, can also be conflated where necessary if the other 364 days in the year can be memory holed and ‘predicted’ rather than measured in the footnotes) … just like they do with the “hottest day , in ______ month, in decades” pronouncements.

          I’m waiting for the left wing MSM echo-box to start parroting:

          ‘Lowest rainfall in the 9th hour of the 8th day of September, in evenly numbered years, in over 100 years, excepting evenly numbered years between 1920 and 1940 !!!’ … (NATURE would of course run this as a front cover story, featuring a dried up river bed in Arizona with a dead turtle carcass on its back, and a scary looking graph with Bill Nye the ‘Science Guy’ superimposed on the graph between the 1920 and 1940 gap; blocking out an inconvenient truth, or twenty.)

          I wonder if the USACE could build a floating wall around the arctic to keep all the ice in one place? I heard that if you clump up ice so that the overall surface area is reduced, that it melts slower!

          This technique seems to work with the climate ‘scientists’ favored by the IPCC, all clumped up together, in chorus, with consensus, and a much higher grant money rating per capita … apparently lies and manipulated data melt slower when you have more fellow traveler’s chained to your consensus.

          00

          • #
            Roy Hogue

            Meanwhile, no one notices that this is the first hurricane to hit Florida in 11 years according to one news weatherman. Yet according to dogma, severe weather events are getting more frequent and even more severe thanks to climate change. I hardly know who to believe anymore. 😉

            11

    • #
      stan stendera

      +1776

      00

  • #
    DonG

    I have no problem with humanities classes exploring alternative realities. They should advertise honestly, but it can be a worthy mental exercise.

    120

    • #

      It is only a worthy mental exercise if people in touch with the real world. By comparing and contrasting they can obtain greater understanding. But living in an alternative reality, like many climate alarmists, carries dangers, especially when they seek to impose that alternative reality onto others in the academia or in policy-making.

      272

      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        It is a very small step from undertaking a mental exercise, into taking physical action. That is the process whereby zealots are radicalised, not that I am an expert in the psychology.

        It seems to me though, that these three academics are very afraid that their course will become derailed by counter views and discussions. They are on thin ice, and they know it, and they know that if the ice cracks, they will be in trouble with the Administration.

        If you can’t withstand debating a topic, you should not be teaching it.

        292

        • #
          Grant (NZ)

          Rereke, the ice is thin because of global warming – not because of a lack of evidence or logical thought to process. 🙂

          I think I might pre-pend Professor to my name. Seems anyone can do it.

          120

        • #
          sophocles

          Sparks will fly when some student discovers some of the science in WG1 (IPCC peer reviewed ergo allowable) disagreeing with The Summary for Policy Makers—also IPCC politically reviewed :-). That would be fun to watch.

          10

  • #
    RoyFOMR

    Hear no evidence. Check
    See no evidence. Check
    Speak no evidence. Check.

    Just believe.

    These three ‘Professors’ don’t do education they just want a congregation to preach at.

    472

  • #

    The belief consensus is irrelvant to policy and irrlevant to science.
    Two examples

    Cook et al 2013 survey of abstracts was concerned with the most banal statements in support of the greenhouse gas effect on journal abstracts. Some were by people outside of the climate field.

    Doran and Zimmerman 2009 asked two questions.

    1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
    2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?

    Someone could have answered yes to the second question if you believed 10% of the recent warming was due to land-use changes and the rest natural.

    Neither survey, nor any IPCC report, will say that there is strong evidence to support non-trivial human-caused climate change that would justify carbon emissions. By strong evidence I do not mean absolute proof, but sufficient to convict a criminal in court of law. Opinion surveys like the ones above would be dismissed as hearsay.

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    • #
      CheshireRed

      Those questions were deliberately vague, allowing plenty of ways to extract the required ‘yes’ answers that could be cooked to deliver the pre-determined objective: a contrived but overwhelming ‘consensus’
      and a thus killer soundbite that could be used to silence any climate debate.

      That is EXACTLY what those (so-called) professors have used it for.

      232

    • #
      bobl

      Kevin,
      Even more banally.
      Have Humans contributed to heating up the environment…

      Well yes, world energy consumption in 2012 was 104,426 TWH, so about that much waste heat has gone into the environment causing mostly Urban Heat Islands, does that impact warming of the planet? Well from an Energy point of view “Absolutely”. So who could answer No to that question?

      Interestingly, the warmists are implying that the CO2 liberated by that energy consumption adds more than 0.6W per square meter or 2.68056e+18 wh or 2,600,000 TWH representing over 20x the liberated energy content of the fuel or an implied Coefficient of performance COP of over 20. Our best heat pumps can barely reach COP 5.

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      • #
        Grant (NZ)

        You make a good point. I can’t figure out whether the heat emitted from my 111 cubic inch V-twin exceeds the heat arising from the heat resulting from the CO2 emitted in generating that heat.

        30

    • #
      Ted O'Brien.

      Kevin. Like so many surveys, badly worded.

      Those two questions would be fair and reasonable but for one flaw. What meaning is assigned to that word “significant”?

      And there is an example of the basis of this whole damnable problem.

      60

      • #

        For the alarmists definition of the word “significant” depends on the context. If it is to support their cause, any scrap of data is significant. For instance the alarmists seem to think it significant that the most of the last few decades globally have all be warmer than the last. The late Prof Bob Carter – a leading expert – often pointed out there is nothing unusual about the warming of the last 200 years. (see video here, after 5 minutes)
        The whole alarmist cause is riddled with false claims about significance, whether it is funding of skeptical views; or the latest extreme weather event (last month flooding in Tennessee, this month a hurricane in Florida); or the statistics on a Lewandowsky opinion survey.

        20

    • #

      @Kevin Marshall

      Was the 2 question survey you give an example of an actual survey, or was it an exercise to short-list the upcoming promotions regime within the ‘profession’? The word survey itself, in this particular field of scientific inquiry, should itself come under scrutiny because a survey is not impartial unless it is anonymous in such a politicized environment.

      I’d like to see a Congress of qualified scientists called, which is open to anyone in the field, including people who retired less than 10 years ago, where an anonymous paper ballot was taken in a closed room … I think we would find that most of the people who are refraining from even answering the survey, would vote against CAGW alarmist dogmas.

      All such surveys should come with a final question:

      3. Do you fear to answer this survey on penalty of being pigeon holed, or defrocked by your peers who desire to comply with ‘consensus’ political opinion for ease of career progression?

      … (or something of the sort)

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      • #

        The Doran and Zimmerman 2009 survey was widely-cited in the peer-reviewed literature as demonstration of an expert consensus.
        An example of why how it nonsense comes from a peer-reviewed diatribe Climate Change Skepticism and Denial: An Introduction Riley E. Dunlap – American Behavioral Scientist 2013. Dunlap says

        The complex nature of human-caused or anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and uncertainties in the risks it poses make it challenging for laypersons to understand its causes, perceive its impacts, and take actions that might help alleviate future warming.

        If climate alarmists who were credible experts in the field, they would soon realize that the area consisted of a number of quite disparate subjects. Building credible computer models is quite different from data analysis, moral issues, economic policy-making and managing policy implementation. But any questioning gets drowned out by the believers who want policy regardless of whether it works, or the cost of it. So the UNFCCC noted in the Paris communique that the sum total of all policy proposals fell far short of the original targets (in diplomatic but not particularly coded language), but ploughed on anyway as the believers campaigned shouted hard to get something passed.

        20

  • #
    ScotsmaninUtah

    BBQ day has been set for the 5th November , I invite you to have a personal BBQ day and cook for friends and family

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    • #
      Just Thinkin'

      That’s a great idea.

      And, you can celebrate Guy Fawkes Day at the same time.

      That should go off with a bang.

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    • #
      Russ Wood

      South Africa has a ‘Heritage Day’ holiday at the end of September. Since no-one could agree exactly WHICH heritage this multi-cultural country should celebrate, the holiday turned into ‘Braai day’, since all Seffricans enjoy a good barbecue. The ANC politicians were furious, ‘cos they’d like their sheeple to attend rallies, etc, to celebrate THEM.

      10

  • #
    Yonniestone

    Breaking news: The University of Colorado lecture “Medical Humanities in the Digital Age” will allow debate on Climate Change, the course will now take place in room 101.

    161

  • #
    pattoh

    “Medical Humanities in the Digital Age ”

    Belief & “understanding” is constructed behind a wall of crafted conceited arrogance.

    Rockefeller Education Foundation at work to create good little “useful idiots” to peddle Rockefeller owned drug companies products.

    WAR IS PEACE
    FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
    IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

    This must be why a lot of the doctors an old fart like me has consulted leave me with the feeling they do not listen to their patients.

    Diagnoses are made from your appearance & what all the previous quacks put in your notes & not from what you tell them.

    Go Donald!!

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  • #
    Uncle Gus

    Seems reasonable to me. Let the orthodox teach the orthodox. Let them have their own little alternate universe. What can it hurt?

    But then, I live in a part of the world (West Sussex) where lots of people believe that the sea level has already risen 20 feet – and they still walk their dogs on the beach every day…

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      That is because sea level rise is not uniform. Obviously the Burgers of West Sussex have negotiated a dispensation with some other local body, for them to have 40 feet of sea level rise, instead.

      Perhaps that other body wanted a deep water port, but couldn’t afford the dredging costs? That sounds like a good politically correct response to me.

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    • #
      Ted O'Brien.

      Uncle Gus. From what I read it wouldn’t be hard to make people believe it in your part of the world, because the sea level does rise by that much on a regular basis.

      http://www.bbc.com/weather/coast_and_sea/tide_tables/2/113

      In Sydney it is only around two metres or less twice a day, and the long term rise is but a steady .65 mm/year.

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      • #
        Uncle Gus

        We have some terrifying high tides here in winter sometimes, especially when the wind is in the wrong direction – people snatched right off the beach and dragged out to sea by giant waves!

        But that’s not the sort of “climate” the local Greens are interested in. Like everything else cool and gnarly, it’s got to come from somewhere exotic and a long way away before the In Crowd take notice. And it’s got to be safely abstract. And the fault of America…

        00

    • #
      Graeme No.3

      There is a 7 metre tide range in the Thames near the Tower of London but for all that the Water Gate (installed ~1285AD) is still barely wet at low tide. Where is all this rising ocean level?

      41

  • #
    handjive

    Quote Senator Malcolm Roberts, Q&A ‘science’ edition:

    “We are teaching the children what to think, not how to think.”

    Malcom Roberts was correct.

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      Agreed.

      And as I mentioned yesterday, we have to back our kids over their teachers.

      The eco-loon captured…er…* ahem* ….”influenced” govt tells the teachers what to teach via whats interestingly called a “curriculum”.

      However, when the teachers vomit this nonsense up, I will back my child every time over the teacher ( and govt ), and tell her that the govt has set the syllabus and told the teacher what to teach, and while we must be respectful of our teacher, however we can also ask questions to demonstrate we are not in agreement with whats being “taught” such as “if the IPCC says the Antarctic is losing ice to Klimat Chang, how does this take into account that there are active hot volcanoes under the ice?”. This allows the teacher to sort of gracefully answer the question and also deliver the nonsense they have to by law.

      It also says loudly to your kids that no everything that is offical is right, and that teachers can also be wrong, and Klimat Chang is un-scientific…..

      I hate the fact we have to train up kids to protect them from propaganda, as it steals thier childhood, but the alternative is the eco-loons capturing their heads and stealing them from us.

      Lenin under Communism in Russia clearly understood and used schools as the primary indoctrination for furthering the nonsense of Communism….the eco loons are Communists, so the same methodology applies.

      On matters marxism in schools, I noticed the person who penned the “Safe Schools” nonsense ( under an allegedly right wing govt…run by a champers socialist…oh…hang on…) basically admitted to propagating marxism via the whole mess……

      So really we are battling hard-core Communism dressed up as “save the fluffy kittens from Klimat Chang” in schools now.

      Now is the time to give ’em grief….

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      • #
        Ted O'Brien.

        In around 1987 our eldest in geography class year 8 was told that in Australia, the farmers had ruined all the cultivation land.

        She objected, and pointed out a few truths. The teacher was not a mug, he was teaching what he had been taught to teach. Our daughter carried her very reasonable argument to her satisfaction.

        In at least 95% of the classrooms in Australia, that statement would have gone unchallenged.

        Why was this lie taught? Because in Australia, and I think still in many other countries, farming is still undertaken in a small business capitalist system. The Marxists in the education system are working to abolish all private management of industry, including all private ownership of land. And that is the driving force behind the whole AGW scam.

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        • #
          OriginalSteve

          I agree, this skirmish is only really starting…

          We have a long way to go…so treat it like a marathon, but as in all asymetric skirmishes, the group that can move quickly and nimbly will win over the entrenched force.

          The fun is only just starting, and I think many skeptics are a force to be reckoned with. Now is the time to be bold and take the fight to the Warmists and show them we are a force to be reckoned with.

          20

  • #

    Anyone wanting to take a course titled “Medical Humanities in the Digital Age”. Should indeed drop out, of the human race.

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  • #
    tom0mason

    This action is evidence of fear, fear by the teaching staff. Their fear is that climate science especially the theory of human induced climate change has fundamental holes evident in it that can not be answered. These tutors are no more that teachers of prayers, indoctrinating the next intake in the mysteries of the incantations.

    Science came from alchemy, mysticism, and witchcraft and this action ensures that science returns to its past. Students becoming mere acolytes in training, readying themselves for a future within the majic circle.

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      All you had to do was watch the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony to see the rank occultism flaunted on the world stage….anyone who says witchcraft is dead is fooling themselves…..

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  • #
    TdeF

    To be fair, they are respectively PhDs in English, Chemistry&Biochemistry and Sociology. English and Sociology are clearly not science, although Flannery would disagree.

    Then “Dr. Haggren’s research interests include, in collaboration with Dr. Sonja Braun-Sand, generation of specific mutations in the DNA encoding yeast Hexokinase I, then isolation and study of this altered enzyme. A biofuels project involves engineering a yeast strain to efficiently digest starch materials prior to alcohol fermentation”

    They could not debate the subject anyway.

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    • #
      TdeF

      Worse, from Wikipedia.

      Medical humanities is an interdisciplinary field of medicine which includes
      the humanities (literature, philosophy, ethics, history and religion),
      social science (anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, sociology, health geography)
      and the arts (literature, theater, film, and visual arts)

      and their application to medical education and practice.

      There is no universally agreed definition of the medical humanities.

      So if you want to do an undefined online course in nothing at all taught by non medical people but about medicine, this is for you.

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  • #
    delcon2

    Isn’t this how the Nazi’s started in the 1930’s before WW11?

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      No, you are thinking of the Communists, towards the end of the nineteenth century. The Nazi’s came later in response.

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  • #
    James Murphy

    Its interesting that the University of Colorado – Colorado Springs campus doesn’t get a mention in the recently released Academic Ranking of World Universities
    http://www.shanghairanking.com/World-University-Rankings-2016/USA.html (filtered for universities in the USA)

    Mind you, I don’t really have a lot of faith in such ranking systems, as they all tend to show the results that the authors set out to show, but it just happened to be something i was perusing.

    Who knows, maybe other areas of study at this university are not as ludicrously backwards as this particular course?

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  • #
    ScotsmaninUtah

    A new censored society..

    Jo I would not want to live in Australia with this sort of strict censorship in your education system.
    I am surprised that this Professor has not been dismissed for failing to live up to University standards of conduct.
    However as a Libertarian I would definitely like to live in Australia… in order to fight this abuse of power.
    certain behaviors require a forced response

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  • #
    Roy Hogue

    Where have we heard that line before? Does the name Al Gore come to mind? But I got it from professors in the Los Angeles Community College District where I taught for so many years. So it’s not limited to Australia by any means.

    There’s no more debate possible, then and now. The fight was fixed from the start.

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      The fight is only fixed, if you think it is fixed.

      Fixed fights stay on the rails. Jump the rails, and do something unexpected, and the person “fixing” the fight always looses. They never have a “Plan B”, you see.

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    • #
      Roy Hogue

      Unfortunately, these fight fixers have all the power, the student has none. You want to pass this course so you can get your degree? Then kiss my behind.

      My president and the congress have all the power and I have none. So every statement from my medical insurer shows a cut taken from the doctor’s payment for this goddamned sequestration repayment — is someone being ripped off? And I continually watch the president walking all over the Constitution and his oath of office on a daily basis. If he hasn’t already done it he’s surely going to declare Paris to be ratified in defiance of the Constitution, federal law, the Congress and the people of the United States. And who will risk trying to stop him? And I don’t mean just say, “Shame on you Mr. President,” I mean STOP HIM. And how many will actually realize that he needs to be stopped? The power is his because he dares to take it and we shake and quiver in our shoes lest his eye fall on us and we get a dose of his disfavor. That’s where this always goes. The power is the professors’ for the same reason, they dare to take it.

      So one aspect of their reign of error fails? So what? They just come up with another one.

      The ultimate betrayal is that the people themselves, if they could come to one understanding, one position on something or even close to that, could toss these thugs out on their butts and they don’t do it. The people is you and me, my neighbors and yours, all too afraid to risk what they have to gain back their freedom to think. So they will lose even what freedom they still have because they will not take a risk.

      Philosophizing is nice for idle conversation but as the man said, “It doesn’t get the cistern pumped or the beefsteak pounded.”*** You have to apply some elbow grease to get anything done.

      I became a student of history late in life but now that I am paying attention, I have learned to understand the big picture as well as the smaller one such as a few college professors gone out of control. I look for principles in play, what is repeated over and over. And in every culture, every nation there ever has been, the path was and is always downhill.

      And I’m a cynic because I got there honestly, over a long time.

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  • #
    harry buttle

    It sounds like Lysenkoism is getting another run, this time in Colorado.

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  • #
    Ruairi

    Some students who hunger for knowledge,
    Trust Professors to guide them through college,
    Must from courses opt out,
    If they climate-change doubt,
    Or not dogma of warming acknowledge.

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  • #
    el gordo

    Rebecca, Wendy and Eileen know nothing of the science.

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    • #
      el gordo

      Women are generally more inclined to believe human induced CO2 is harmful to humanity.

      http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/12/02/women-more-than-men-say-climate-change-will-harm-them-personally/

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      • #
        Annie

        Thank goodness we are not all such twerps!

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        • #
          Rereke Whakaaro

          That is a delightfully English word, that I have not heard for years. But very apt in these circumstances.

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          • #
            tom0mason

            From http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=twerp

            twerp (n.)
            of unknown origin; OED and Barnhart give earliest date as 1925, but the “Dictionary of American Slang” gives a first reference of 1874 (but without citation and I can’t find it), which, if correct, would rule out the usual theory that it is from the proper name of T.W. Earp, a student at Oxford c. 1911, who kindled wrath “in the hearts of the rugger-playing stalwarts at Oxford, when he was president of the Union, by being the last, most charming, and wittiest of the ‘decadents.’ ” [Rawson]

            “Mean to say you never heard of Sinzy? Why, he’s one of the greatest characters in this town. He’s a terrible twerp to look at — got a face like bad news from home, but I guess he’s the best jazz piano player in the world.” [Julian Street, “Cross-Sections,” 1923]

            30

        • #
          Roy Hogue

          Twit” might apply too. But I disagree that women are more inclined to believe human induced CO2 is harmful to humanity. My wife has no use for any of this global warming foolishness and I didn’t have to try to convince her, I just showed her the weakness in the argument for it — sharp lady, my wife. And I’ve met numerous women who laugh at the very concept. Maybe I move in a different world than the “experts” but that’s been my experience.

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          • #
            tom0mason

            Roy,
            Further to your definition of twit –

            Twit (v.):
            “to blame, reproach, taunt, upbraid,” 1520s, twite, shortened form of Middle English atwite, from Old English ætwitan “to blame, reproach,” from æt “at” + witan “to blame,” from Proto-Germanic *witanan “to look after, guard, ascribe to, reproach” (source also of Old English wite, Old Saxon witi, Old Norse viti “punishment, torture;” Old High German wizzi “punishment,” wizan “to punish;” Dutch verwijten, Old High German firwizan, German verweisen “to reproach, reprove,” Gothic fraweitan “to avenge”), from PIE root *weid- “to see” (see vision). For sense evolution, compare Latin animadvertere, literally “to give heed to, observe,” later “to chastise, censure, punish.” Related: Twitted; twitting. As a noun meaning “a taunt” from 1520s.

            Twit (n.)
            “foolish, stupid and ineffectual person,” 1934, British slang, popular 1950s-60s, crossed over to U.S. with British sitcoms. It probably developed from twit (v.) in the sense of “reproach,” but it may be influenced by nitwit.

            Nitwit (n.):
            “stupid person,” 1922, probably from nit “nothing,” from dialectal German or Yiddish, from Middle Low German (see nix) + wit (n.).

            From http://www.etymonline.com/

            So you can twit a nitwit.

            30

            • #
              Roy Hogue

              In the only usage I’m familiar with, I’ve only heard twerp applied by one student to another as a putdown as I went through school. “Go away you little twerp,” relegating the unwanted student to near subhuman status as it were. Beyond school I don’t remember ever hearing the term until now.

              Twit, on the other hand, is something I’ve used quite a bit off and on, probably sometimes on Jo Nova, to indicate less than capable of understanding the situation or even life itself. It’s certainly in general usage by those who disapprove of another’s understanding of the “facts”, whether the facts are really facts or not. But in anything near polite company I’ve never heard it (what does that tell you about me? Ouch!).

              As for nitwit, I’m guilty there too. Nit may stem from usage I’ve heard where nit is referring to a really small bit of information, a nit, being made a big deal of by someone, etc. Or consider nitpicking as in concentrating on a small irrelevant detail while ignoring the important stuff. Any way you slice it I expect you’re right, a nitwit can be a twit.

              And now that we’ve solved all the world’s irrelevant problems we should quit before we get too far behind to recover. 😉

              41

    • #
      john karajas

      If they were to come to Perth they would have instant rapport with the Guild of Undergraduates at the University of Western Australia (remember the furore over Bjorn Lomborg not so long ago?). This kind of closed minded bigotry is not only confined to Colorado unfortunately.

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  • #
    Amber

    It is a well known fact the 98% is inaccurate. 98% of scientists did not say global warming (rebrand Climate Change ) is non-debatable . Why would they lie to students ? Why would academics mislead students ?

    Isn’t it more accurate to say to students if you haven’t drank the scary global warming cool aid you are not welcome
    because we cannot or don’t want to defend it .

    Climate changes as always and humans must have some impact. CO2 is beneficial to life and represents a fraction of 1 % of the atmosphere .
    Do these teachers actually think natural climate variables (sun ) are going to be countered by a trace gas beneficial to life and which represents a fraction of 1 % of the atmosphere ? Co2 is going up no doubt and if the warming trend continues (with or without human influence ) then that is good for plants ,animals and humans will adapt either way but we are not going to set the world’s thermostat to some committee’s liking .

    Most teachers in the world understand the scientific method. Go to their classes if you want an education .

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    • #
      RexAlan

      If you divide 1,000,000 by 400 parts per million it’s actually 1/2500th’s of the atmosphere. I’ve started using this fraction in my discussions with the warmists, I think people can relate to it better.

      81

      • #
        OriginalSteve

        I told my 11 year old we cna fit everyone in the world into NSW with a 3m x 3m space, and the main problem people cant feed themselves in the 3rd world is often because of politics.

        I also told her world population will start to decrease around 2030…and more CO2 means more plants and more food, anyway….trashed Klimat Chang in easy steps.

        She got it.

        I think we need to use this basic info to arm kids with the facts to fight back against the tide of toxic sludge called “climate science”

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      • #
        TdeF

        and so unlike clouds of water, CO2 is invisible which means that for the light we see, it has no effect, so unlike clouds.
        Sure, in a part of the infra red spectrum, it is not invisible but that is not where most of the outgoing heat is located, so the effect of 1/25,000th of the air being opaque to a tiny part of the light spectrum is unlikely to have any effect at all. According to one professional infra red astronomer who blogged here, he saw no infra red reflection even at the frozen poles.

        32

        • #
          TdeF

          My point is like yours that CO2 is tiny and invisible and the essential building block of all life on earth. Not only is the devastation alleged extremely unlikely and based on the most spurious logic, the planet has not heated at all in the last 20 years of intense checking. The seas have not changed even slightly in a lifetime. Ask anyone.

          So what we are being told about global warming, climate devastation and drowning cities and rocketing temperatures is clearly untrue.

          The only question is why would people lie? How many good people believe what they are told by alleged experts, Prof Flannery in particular. Did he tell people he had no hard science qualifications beyond school, that his degree was in English and his PhD in kangaroos and that he lives at the sea side? Did Al Gore tell people his BA was based on an essay on the effect of TV in Nixon’s election? Does the Climate Council tell people that they have no actual qualifications in meteorology? Do they tell people that if Global Warming was simply made up fantasy, they would be out of a job? No.

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          • #
            TdeF

            The question which puzzles me is whether particle physicist and BBC commentator Dr. Brian Cox really believes man made Global Warming is true? Assuming he is honest as you must, he has fallen for the idea that NASA and the Royal Society would not lie to him, that 17,000 scientists and engineers really believe it? Has he ever considered whether he can confirm it for himself? I would ask him to consider radio carbon dating the air to see how much old CO2 is there and he would decide, as I did and as is self evident, that it was all made up political science fiction.

            72

            • #
              Roy Hogue

              And that’s pointing out the stupidest idea in this whole CO2 debate, that man made CO2 can do something that natural CO2 cannot. A CO2 molecule can’t tell if it’s man made or not. It simply absorbs and then radiates away a little “packet” of energy according to standard old physics, long known and accepted. And the logarithmic rule applies to considerations of concentration in the atmosphere.

              Can anyone tell me that there’s any substance to the man made argument? I don’t see it. So what if there are different isotopes of carbon floating around in the air?

              32

      • #
        tom0mason

        Also people get a better understanding when this ratio is expressed currency term.

        e.g. If 100% of your atmosphere is represented by $100, or expressed in local currency £,€,¥, etc., the CO2 represents 4¢.

        or

        In the atmosphere CO2 is 400 millionths of a percent or 0.04%, in money terms this is the same as 4¢ in $100.

        30

    • #
      Bulldust

      I see someone has been adjusting Cook’s Constant (97%) upwards already. Someone dust for GISS fingerprints…

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  • #

    Pssst. Most university courses are needless.

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  • #
    pat

    because i hurriedly posted this story on jo’s previous thread after the cricket (Aussies vs Sri Lanka) last nite & logged off, i did worry it might be satire, but woke today to, sadly, find it is real.

    Breitbart, Wash Times, WUWT plus some other online websites have picked up the story…but NOT the CAGW MSM, of course.

    31 Aug: Breitbart: James Delingpole: U.S. College Professors Tell Students: ‘Climate Skeptics Verboten!’
    The three professors are…READ ON
    http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/08/31/u-s-college-professors-tell-students-climate-skeptics-verboten/

    31 Aug: Washington Times: Valerie Richardson: Professors advise students to drop class if they question climate change

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    • #

      Jo, a wonderful post by the Chiefio ‘Forcing the Cathedral’
      relating to this discussion. It’s about the fundamental strain
      between two major ways of organizing human activity, ‘The Cathedral’
      top-down micro-management and The Bazaar’ market-place-distributed -action. Ranges from IT Linux, to Government Yes Minister stagnation
      to Climate Change to central -control education. Includes his own
      experiences.

      https://chiefio.wordpress.com/

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  • #
    PeterS

    Modern science at many academic institutions not only discourage scientists from thinking outside the mainstream belief system, they lose their jobs if they do so. Freedom to express alternative ideas in science is extremely dangerous to ones career, even if one is armed with far stronger supporting scientific evidence as is the case with AGW showing it to be a bad theory at best and a false and thoroughly disproved scam at worst. Yet lectures and teachers everywhere are still telling their students that’s it’s not only a theory it’s a proven fact and as such debating it is not allowed. Why? What has corrupted the thinking of such supposedly intelligent people? I can only think of one thing. They are not intelligent after all as the 2008 documentary “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” explained, and instead prefer to follow a lie to the end than admit they are wrong.

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  • #
    ScotsmaninUtah

    Brexit Vote reveals more than just a desire to leave the EU and get a new Passport.

    Jo sorry this is way off OT.

    As more information becomes available it seems London and the EU Banking system have more to tell us sbout just what the Banking system has been up to during th last 15 years

    Ever ordinary person assumes that the U.S was responsible for all the derivatives markets issues, however as UK and EU Banks complain and grumble about the ramifications of the Brexit vote. All those same Banks have to now declare what they have been exposing their assets to in order to extracate themselves from those risks (deals).

    It makes for interesting reading …

    http://bruegel.org/2016/06/lost-passports-a-guide-to-the-brexit-fallout-for-the-city-of-london/

    note : pay special attention to settlement systems and which countries were clearing the derivatives market instruments.

    40

  • #
    ROM

    From “Brainy quote” and with a full “collective” of University Proffessors to substantiate the quotes below which seem very apt in this case ;

    Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
    Martin Luther King, Jr.
    .

    One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain’t nothin’ can beat teamwork.
    Edward Abbey
    .

    Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain.
    Friedrich Schiller

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      “Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly”

      ( Proverbs 26:11 )

      Encapsulated perfectly, I think…..

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  • #
    Asp

    And people actually pay for this ‘enjudication’?

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  • #
    Bob in Castlemaine

    Presumably should any coarse participant be unfortunate enough to be lulled off to sleep by the monotonous recitation of the litany he or she can expect summary execution by anti-aircraft gun?

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  • #

    Is there a link to the course information?

    21

    • #
      pat

      Gee Aye – hope u can navigate it.

      “Medical Humanities in the Digital Age” at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs
      https://issuu.com/thecollegefix/docs/hum_ol_3990_medical_humanities_fall

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        pat

        Gee Aye –

        i got what appears to be the course by clicking on the first headline. good luck.

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      • #

        thanks Pat.

        It is not a course that is going to produce a better society or, I would suggest, do anything for the employability of the participants. On topic though, the staff are clearly not capable of debating climate change. They are introducing it into the course to use as a way to explore a particular sociological concept. Clearly they want to discuss the course material unhindered by the climate debate, that they would not be able to moderate in any case.

        I think that is fair enough per se but the didactic message by the lecturers to students is at odds with engendering free thought etc. I disagree with commenters who call this unscientific. The course does not pretend to take a scientific approach.

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    ROM

    Off Topic;

    And Wow! How the climate change worm doth turn!

    —Scientifically—, the whole anthropogenic climate alarmist “Carbon” aka CO2 catastrophe in the making is about over.

    Its is now becoming close to dead and its stinking carcass is just laying about getting ready to be buried for good, something which unfortunately will probably take quite a long time as it involves defanging all of its innumerable parasites as well.

    Nic Lewis on Climate audit has just very firmly shot down the latest fashionable bit of modelled climate science from Abrams and published in Nature.

    Blog listed by Jo here; Experts “surprised” to discover what skeptics have known for years: world has been warming for 200 years
    ———————–
    From Pierre Gosselin’s “NoTricksZone” German to English climate and science blog.

    [ Prof. Mojib Latif is a big time warmist / alarmist with easy access to European media outlets which he used to spread the gospel of climate change alarmism ]
    .

    “Dominating Factor”…Leading Warmist Climatologist Concedes Natural Oceanic Cycles Directly Related To Troposphere Temperature

    Renowned climate scientist Prof. Mojib Latif used to often appears on television, radio and speeches all over Germany to spread the word of an impending human-made climate catastrophe.

    One of the highlights of Latif’s many appearances was the CO2 “fingerprint” in the atmosphere, which according to Latif is supposed to confirm the greenhouse effect. Up in the stratosphere it is supposed to cool because heat would be trapped by CO2 in the troposphere below. This of course always impressed his gullible audiences.

    Profound reversal

    However, it now appears that the distinguished German scientist is now changing his mind profoundly. In a recent press release he and his fellow co-scientists in Kiel, Germany, conceded that the cooling is likely more a part of the 60-year PDO ocean cycle.
    &
    A well-known climatic phenomenon is the so-called Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). “This natural variation with decadal timescale leads to anomalously high or low water temperatures of the Pacific,” explained Dr. Wang. The PDO influences the climate and ecosystems in the Pacific region and also the global mean temperature of the Earth.
    &

    Thus, the current study contradicts earlier hypotheses about the temperature variability of the tropical tropopause. As early as in the late 20th century, scientists had seen a cooling trend there which began in the 1970s. They traced this observation back to anthropogenic causes, in particular the increase in greenhouse gases. “However, this assumption was based on a rather patchy data base and simplified climate models. Our study shows that the cooling of the tropical tropopause does not have to be a one-way street but could also be part of a natural fluctuation which extends over several decades,” Professor Matthes emphasized.

    This knowledge is also of paramount importance for the general climate research.
    The temperature of the tropopause decides on the input of water vapor into the stratosphere: The higher the water vapor content in the stratosphere, the higher the increase in surface temperatures. Anthropogenic climate change also has an effect on the temperature of the tropopause, and this effect could become more evident in the coming decades. “Only if we can clearly distinguish natural variability from anthropogenic influences, we can make reliable forecasts for the future development of our climate,” Prof. Matthes summarizes.

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    thingodonta

    As usual they conflate different issues.

    -There is no debate that the earth has warmed to some degree over the last few hundred years.
    -There is some debate about just how much.
    -There is much more debate about what has driven it, and in what proportion, at different times. (i.e. natural versus human factors), and how much more will therefore occur and at what rate.

    To say there is no debate in all this is to over-simplify in order to escape from the unknowns and the complexity, but unknowns and complexity doesn’t go away just because one wants it to, that is what science is all about. Now they are applying their escapist-style solution to students, go away and the problem of unknowns and complexity is solved.

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      Dave N

      They’re not saying there isn’t any debate; they just want it to stop. As to who exactly decides which parts are true or not is anyone’s guess.

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  • #
    pat

    UCCS has some form:

    29 Jul: KKTV: UCCS Chancellor addresses concerns over Trump visiting campus, protests
    Fliers were left around campus Thursday encouraging students to either stage a walk out on Friday and stay home, go to the peaceful protest, or let school leaders know how they feel.
    “I think the fliers telling people to walk out on it is a bit overblown. I don’t agree with everything he says, but I think trying to shut people down when they’re saying something is a bad precedent,” student Sean Glover said.
    The university’s chancellor, Pam Shockley-Zalabak, sent out an email to the campus community Thursday morning saying, “Many faculty, staff and students have expressed disappointment and anger at Mr. Trump’s appearance on our campus.”…
    “Freedom of speech is important,” Glover said…
    Our 11 News crew spoke with some students Thursday. They say regardless of their political beliefs, they want to be informed as much as possible on all sides of the spectrum.
    “I would like to know that I’m educated on both sides so I can make an opinion from an independent base not just because I’m a Republican or Democrat. I think it’s good to be exposed,” UCCS senior Ross Burton said…
    ***Here is the full letter from UCCS Chancellor Pam Shockley-Zalabak to students, staff and faculty…READ ALL
    http://www.kktv.com/content/news/UCCS-Chancellor-addresses-concerns-over-Donald-Trump-visiting-campus-388607982.html

    29 Jul: KOAA5: UCCS professors speak out against Donald Trump
    118 faculty members signed a letter to Chancellor Pam Shockley-Zalabak Thursday, saying they acknowledge Donald Trump’s freedom of speech, but they also want to exercise their freedom to speak out against the presidential candidate and what he stands for…

    originally, it was 114 signatories, including EILEEN SKAHILL, but not the other two involved in the “climate” email. whether or not they signed on belatedly, i don’t yet know:

    28 Jul: UCCS Communique: Faculty respond to Trump event
    To be clear, UCCS is a public university and, as such, it is an institution that reveres free speech…
    As faculty of a university that prides itself on the encouragement of free speech and the productive discourse that can follow, we reject the reckless use of language that supports silencing anyone on our campus—even as we respect the right to speak such words…
    (signatories include) Eileen Skahill, Sociology and Humanities
    http://communique.uccs.edu/?p=23679

    31 Jul: The Gazette, Colorado: EDITORIAL: UCCS faculty objections to Trump were unbecoming; they should celebrate diversity
    Donald Trump’s visit to the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs on Friday was a beautiful event despite unbecoming objections of faculty.
    Hundreds of protesters communicated with thousands of adoring Trump fans, and our community was among the first to hear from a potential new president since he accepted his party’s nomination.
    Trump spoke in his typical unprepared style, delivering a colorful stream of consciousness and mocking politicians who use teleprompters. Love or hate Trump, his talk was worth hearing…
    So it was dispiriting to see more than 100 faculty members sign a letter to “censure” and “reject” the Republican nominee’s pending speech…
    The letter gets weirder from there. It cites the university’s policy on diversity and inclusiveness, which says the institution “must be inclusive of everyone” in order to combat “legacies of advantage and disadvantage.”…
    To “be inclusive of everyone,” academe has a long way to go in helping conservatives counter a legacy of disadvantage. A 2014 study by UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute found a historic and growing faculty imbalance that favors “liberal” and “far left” views.
    The study determined liberal professors outnumber conservative peers by 5-to-1. Faculty members who self-identify as “liberal” have increased 20 percent in the past 25 years. George Mason economics professor Daniel Klein estimates the nation’s college faculty vote Democratic by 10-to-1.
    So extreme is the legacy of advantage for the left, the University of Colorado at Boulder launched an affirmative action program to address it…
    To honor a code of inclusion, UCCS faculty members should not censure views that counter the overwhelmingly predominant philosophy of their field. Rather, they should wholeheartedly welcome diverse ideas that challenge a longstanding and growing legacy of left-wing privilege.
    http://gazette.com/editorial-uccs-faculty-objections-to-trump-were-unbecoming-they-should-celebrate-diversity/article/1581607

    reminder: 10,000 had tickets for the event. Trump called out the Fire Marshall for reducing the number the hall could hold to 1,500. a thousand plus were herded into overflow room with a screen, and Trump addressed them after the rally. thousands more had to stay outside.

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  • #

    Was the winter just gone the hottest in the history of all universes according to the B.O.M.

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    • #
      Retired Now

      Its either the hottest in “history”, or the coldest in 23 years, but either way it is that way because of global warming!

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    Graham

    That’s fine, I have no problem restricting my criticism of the AGW hypothesis to the IPCC reviewed science. If you bother to actually read the entirety of AR5, you’ll see just how blatantly the summary for policy makers (which is all the media ever bothers to report on) misrepresents and often contradicts what’s actually in the body of the work. Even if you don’t want to waste time with the whole document, I’d highly recommend reading Chapter 6, the physical science basis, to observe just how weak the argument actually is.

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  • #

    It’s not a class on climate science or physics. There is no reason for it to discuss fringe ideas about manmade climate change.

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    • #
      AndyG55

      “It’s not a class on climate science or physics”

      You might stand a chance of passing , then.

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      • #
        ianl8888

        Please be warned – engaging with APPELLATIONS XXLVIX will destroy the thread; that’s the intention. He just bombards it with never-ending glib irrelevancies.

        Best just leave it fallow in silence.

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      • #
        tom0mason

        AndyG55,

        Show so respect Andy.
        This is the perfect job for DA as it is devoid of any real science (you know like observation, measurement, verification, etc.), and would be a step-up from being a lowly magazine hack, and blogger.
        Hey, who knows he might learn something — about people.

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  • #
    Dave in the States

    In other words:

    “All you scientifically literate please stay out of our feel good class with your critical thinking, scientific method, and mathematical analysis. We really don’t like having our butts handed to us during in class debate by undergraduates.”

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    • #

      It’s a humanities class. Why should it be discussing the fundamentals of climate science — which the students are in no way prepared for?

      “Hi class. Let’s begin with the partial differential two-stream equations, and look for a solution for real molecular spectra as specified by the HITRAN database.”

      27

      • #
        el gordo

        Yeah, its about mass delusion.

        ‘An activity assigned within that section instructs students to take a test to measure their own carbon footprint. The purpose, reads the syllabus, “is not to create guilt or shame, though those emotions are entirely common.”

        Climate Depot

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      • #
        AndyG55

        Yep, humanities should be just taught to accept whatever BS they are told.

        You did humanities, right DA.

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      • #
        AndyG55

        This is DA, wanting all people kept his own very low standard of knowledge.

        Never question, just regurgitate.

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  • #
    jorgekafkazar

    Academic ignorance is without limit, since they’re willing to embrace lies.

    100

    • #

      Is that your best response — just call everything lies, since you can in no way disprove any of the science, or even understand it?

      29

      • #
        el gordo

        Its possible to disprove the science and humiliate the propagandists, unless they fall on their swords in the interval.

        Mojib Latif, a leading member of the Klimatariat, admits that natural ocean cycles are a dominating factor in troposphere temperature. Apparently the PDO and 60 year cycle are back in vogue.

        See more at: http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.AwIpiTNx.dpuf

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      • #
        AndyG55

        Says the backyard sci-fantasy writer for a low-end backwoods journal.

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      • #
        AndyG55

        It should be pointed out that DA has basically and continually proven he has very little understanding of ANYTHING to do with science of any sort.

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  • #

    Is the University of Colorado looking for a tax exemption on the basis of becoming a religious institution?

    Because there’s no exemption for Dogma Training Schools.

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  • #
    Bruce

    Perhaps, instead of using terms like “Education Institutions” we ought to use the term “Indoctrination/Education Institutions”, for the majority of higher education entities, which by the way, does not include Praguer? University.

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    • #

      Perhaps we should teach that unicorn farts are causing global warming, and CO2 really isn’t a greenhouse gas after all?

      28

      • #
        AndyG55

        SO you believe in unicorn farts !

        We all know that CO2 is used in greenhouses to enhance plant growth.

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      • #
        Angry

        David Appell,
        You obviously believe that is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end…….

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      • #
        bobl

        Unicorn Farts really? You do know that Unicorns are imaginary right?

        Seriously David if you are up for some independent critical thinking I could educate you, but you do need to trust your own calculations if I do. There is some pretty solid math, unrefuted that lays out the case WHY Catastrophic CO2 induced Global warming isn’t happening and wont happen. The math is easy, and you can look up the facts for yourself

        Only if you are interested though, I don’t want to waste my time if you are closed minded.

        11

  • #
    Bruce

    Sorry, Prager University.

    20

  • #
    MudCrab

    In the “Digital” Age?

    Is this a history class then?

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  • #
    RedComet

    It is so strange seeing people on the other side of the world talk about my relatively small college. I hope this doesn’t make you think too badly of it. The funny thing is CO Springs is a pretty conservative town with a large religious community. UCCS too has a large population of republicans and libertarian students which makes this incident all the more amusing to me. I suppose this is how Australians must have felt when westerners were bemoaning the fate of the great barrier reef without even having been there. I would hope my school values free speech and will deal with this instead of sweeping it under the rug until an organization like FIRE gets involved. Students seem to be relatively open minded but I have had my run ins with some pretty dogmatic faculty and I have felt like I couldn’t properly express my opinions on climate without being given a stink eye.

    All the best from Colorado.

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    • #

      CO2 is a greenhouse gas in Colorado Springs, just as much as it is anywhere else.

      PS: Lived there for a year from 1994-95.
      Not too bad. Would like to look up tomorrow and see Pike’s Peak again.

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      • #
        AndyG55

        “CO2 is a greenhouse gas in Colorado Springs”

        What do they grow in greenhouses in Colorado Springs?

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      • #
        AndyG55

        “Would like to look up tomorrow and see Pike’s Peak again”

        You will need to get out of your basement and into the REAL WORLD first. 🙂

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    • #

      Hi red, This is the home of NCAR/UCAR all of which (plus staff) must be quickly dispatched to the interior of the Sun, for possible continuation of true Earthlings.

      52

      • #
        RedComet

        That would be CU boulder not UCCS, which is in Colorado Springs. But I agree with the desire to launch said organizations into the sun

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      bobl

      It can be, re faculty. Problem with a lot of them is that they “Trust” each other, many have never even done the math. Learn it and run them through why CAGW is essentially impossible and many with science backgrounds (the ones who’s eyes don’t glaze over at the sight of an integral symbol) will at least begin to doubt.

      When you raise it, do it as a question lay it out and ask why – most academics are egomaniacs who can’t resist showing a student how much smarter than them they are

      Try this little truth: the formula for the logarithmic relationship between CO2 and temp.

      dT= C ln (C/C0)

      Now average temp in 150 years is up 0.8C
      Average CO2 has gone from 280PPM to 400PPM

      so 0.8=C ln (480/280) or C = 0.8/ln(480/280) C=2.24

      Now compute for a doubling using C computed from actual total warming in the last 150 Years

      dT = 2.24 ln(2) = 1.55 Deg C per doubling (Climate sensitivity assuming all warming in the last 150 years is CO2 driven)

      The argument continues -> clearly CO2 was NOT the cause of all the warming in the last 150 years, the IPCC implies half of it might be which gives Climate sensitivity to CO2 = 1.55/2 = 0.75 Degrees per doubling.

      Now say but you can’t reconcile this math with the statements from the IPCC claiming up to 6 degrees of warming might happen in the next 100 years over which less than a doubling of CO2 is likely to happen especially given that the relationship is a log law and that for a roughly linear rising CO2 there must be a diminishing response, that is the warming in the next 100 years period must be less that the warming in the last 100 year period for the same CO2 rise – IPCC claims of 3-6 degrees C look way off, and you calculate it shouldn’t be more than 0.8 C (Ie around the amount the last 150 years produced).

      Just ask them to show you where you went wrong.

      PS you might get some interesting responses

      10

  • #
    ren

    I advise you to learn about the climate to start with a comparison dense atmospheres.
    Common 0.1 bar tropopause in thick atmospheres
    set by pressure-dependent infrared transparency
    T. D. Robinson1,2* and D. C. Catling2,3,4
    A minimum atmospheric temperature, or tropopause, occurs
    at a pressure of around 0.1 bar in the atmospheres of Earth1
    ,
    Titan2
    , Jupiter3
    , Saturn4
    , Uranus and Neptune4
    , despite great
    differences in atmospheric composition, gravity, internal heat
    and sunlight. In all of these bodies, the tropopause separates
    a stratosphere with a temperature profile that is controlled
    by the absorption of short-wave solar radiation, from a region
    below characterized by convection, weather and clouds5,6
    .
    However, it is not obvious why the tropopause occurs at the
    specific pressure near 0.1 bar. Here we use a simple, physically
    based model7
    to demonstrate that, at atmospheric pressures
    lower than 0.1 bar, transparency to thermal radiation allows
    short-wave heating to dominate, creating a stratosphere. At
    higher pressures, atmospheres become opaque to thermal
    radiation, causing temperatures to increase with depth and
    convection to ensue. A common dependence of infrared
    opacity on pressure, arising from the shared physics of
    molecular absorption, sets the 0.1 bar tropopause. We reason
    that a tropopause at a pressure of approximately 0.1 bar is
    characteristic of many thick atmospheres, including exoplanets
    and exomoons in our galaxy and beyond. Judicious use of this
    rule could help constrain the atmospheric structure, and thus
    the surface environments and habitability, of exoplanets.
    http://faculty.washington.edu/dcatling/Robinson2014_0.1bar_Tropopause.pdf

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  • #

    Off this topic: but past and go.
    http://www.drroyspencer.com/2016/08/experiment-results-show-a-cool-object-can-make-a-warm-object-warmer-still/#comment-222752

    Will Janoschka says:
    August 31, 2016 at 6:41 PM

    Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D. says: August 31, 2016 at 4:43 PM

    “Hmmm. Maybe we should start calling the resurrection of Maxwells Demon theory, Sky Dragons Demon.”

    Challenge on:: stupid Idiotic insane Dr. Roy Spencer! Just try to defend your idiocy against those who have painfully learned repeated (soldering iron up your ass) truth of the physical! -will-

    [Please Will. If Spencer allows comments again, fergoodnesssake don’t abuse it! – Jo]

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    • #
      Peter C

      Would like to give a tick, but it might be misinterpreted!

      20

    • #
      AndyG55

      Roy’s experiment is dubious at best.

      He needs to look at where the air is moving

      There cannot be convective heat rising from the top HOT plate without it flowing to some extent over the ice bath. Replacement air has to come from somewhere.

      What he is seeing is almost certainly an upward flow of air that is cooler when the ice bath is uncovered than when it is closed, hence, plate cooling is more when it is open.

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    • #
      Mark D.

      Will, I really enjoy what you post and your entertaining style. Sometimes, though, you would be better off not clicking the “send” button. If Dr. Roy has a sense of humor you might get away with your language. To a reader that just happens to stumble upon your discussions, well, they likely will misunderstand or lump you in the crackpot crowd.

      Where crackpots are lumped is like quicksand; one rarely gets out.

      To be clear, I do not lump you in the crackpot crowd but watch yourself! I see you have wet sand on at least one boot.

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    pat

    31 Aug: Honolulu Star-Advertiser: Sophie Cocke: Obama talks of his Hawaii ties, climate change at East-West Center speech
    (The Associated Press contributed to this story)
    At the center, the president spoke for about 12 minutes during a combined reception for the Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders and the East-West Center Sustainability Summit. There were about 200 invited guests in attendance.
    “Welcome to Hawaii. Aloha,” he said. “It’s not often that I get to welcome folks to my home state.”
    Before delivering his prepared remarks, the president noted that Hawaii was facing the threat of two hurricanes and urged the public to be prepared and to listen to the instructions of local and state leaders…
    “No nation, not even one as powerful as the U.S. is immune from a changing climate,” he said.
    He referenced conditions in Alaska where the “sea is already swallowing villages” and glaciers are melting at an unprecedented pace in modern times, as a “preview of our future.”
    He also highlighted his administration’s strides in encouraging the adoption of more clean energy, which has become economically competitive with dirty energy sources. “So there is no conflict between a healthy economy and a healthy planet,” he said…
    On Thursday, the president is scheduled to take a trip to Midway Atoll in Papahanaumokuakea…
    On Friday, Obama leaves Hawaii for China where he will attend the Group of 20 major economies summit and meet with China’s president…

    Earlier today, Obama gave a speech on conservation and climate change at the 20th Annual Lake Tahoe Summit in Stateline, Nev…
    “From here, I’m going to travel to my original home state of Hawaii”…
    Then I head to China, with whom we’ve partnered — as the world’s two largest economies and two largest carbon emitters —to set historic climate targets that are going to lead the rest of the world to a cleaner, more secure future.”…

    SCROLL DOWN: (IN FULL) Remarks by President Obama to leaders from the Pacific Island Conference of Leaders and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature…
    http://www.staradvertiser.com/breaking-news/motorists-urged-to-avoid-traveling-to-town-during-obama-visit/

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    pat

    1 Sept: Guardian: Paul Karp: Josh Frydenberg plays down Climate Change Authority call for tougher emissions limits
    Environment minister says government has no plans to introduce emissions trading schemes and claims Australia is on track to meet target
    Frydenberg said the government had no plans to tighten limits on emissions by the biggest polluters and the Climate Change Authority’s advice to introduce two emissions trading schemes was a “report to, not by, government” and committed only to a review of its policies in 2017…
    Speaking with Radio National on Thursday, Frydenberg noted the report was commissioned as part of a deal with the Palmer United party to scrap the carbon tax…
    On Radio National he said his job as environment and energy minister required him to get “affordable energy, because households and businesses are very vulnerable to higher electricity prices”…
    “We’ll continue to support Arena and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation,” Frydenberg said.
    He said, “We have transitioned the grant program to a loan program”, although he conceded this included a $1.3bn saving to the budget bottom line.
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/sep/01/josh-frydenberg-rejects-climate-change-authority-calls-for-tougher-emissions-limits

    1 Sept: RenewEconomy: Christine Milne: Climate Change Authority cops out – just when we need it most
    Following his gutting of CSIRO and ARENA, Malcolm Turnbull has ransacked the Climate Change Authority…
    It is a sad end. I am personally deeply distressed to see the era of credible science based advice from the Climate Change Authority come to an end and with it the respect that it had garnered from the wider community.
    With its reputation in tatters, it will drag on as another impediment to the radical action that addressing climate change requires but its days as an agreed and respected arbiter of what the science requires is over. I pay tribute to Dr Clive Hamilton and Professor David Karoly for their passionate adherence to what the science requires and for having stayed the course…
    By stacking the Climate Change Authority Board, Malcolm Turnbull has ransacked the independent arbiter and politicised the formal advice given to Parliament. He has destroyed yet another critical policy institution when we need it most. Who will now credibly advise the Australian Parliament on what action the science demands?
    http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/climate-change-authority-cops-just-need-13716

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  • #
    Andrew McRae

     
    Aww just another victim of the inhouse drive-by.
    They say jump, you say How high?

    40

  • #
    Markus A. Frank

    Colorado climate change professors; smoking hooch trying to prove the existence of phlogiston.
    I need a safe space; feminist science is offensive.
    “Hide the decline” of scientific inquiry, quick, before anybody sees what we are doing to ruin
    a generation of potential breakthrough science.
    This so much reminds me of book burning, but nothing about climate “science” surprises me any more.
    One question, Joanne; Was the decision by these three stooges to forbid academic dissent peer reviewed ?

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  • #
    pat

    30 Aug: CNN Money: Heather Long: Nobel prize winner tells Clinton: Tax fossil fuels
    Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has some advice for Hillary Clinton: Tax fossil fuels.
    Stiglitz, who is an adviser to Clinton, says taxing carbon would be the best way to address climate change — and boost the U.S. economy.
    The move would immediately lead to higher prices for oil, gas and coal. It would also hike the cost of anything that uses those fuels such as electricity and transportation. The goal is to force Americans to find alternatives that are cheaper and better for the planet.
    Taxes typically hinder the economy, but Stiglitz believes this one would help…

    ***Stiglitz says he has pitched the plan to her team, although he understands why the campaign has not adopted it as part of her 2016 election platform.
    “There’s nothing more important than making sure [Clinton] gets elected as opposed to Trump,” says Stiglitz. ***”One has to be sensitive to what you can sell in a campaign.”…

    One of the biggest concerns about a tax on carbon is that it would be a major burden on the poor and middle class. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that costs for a typical middle class family would go up about $600 a year.
    To ensure that the poor aren’t hit too hard by a carbon tax, Stiglitz proposes giving them some sort of credit or rebate…
    http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/30/investing/hillary-clinton-climate-change-joseph-stiglitz-advice/

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  • #
    pat

    comment #48 is in moderation.

    30 Aug: UK Telegraph: Jillian Ambrose: Gazprom’s gas sales to Europe soar by a third
    The jump in gas flows to Europe – including Germany, the Netherlands and the UK – more than offset the 22pc fall in the company’s exports to former Soviet Union countries, helping bolster Gazprom’s income above market expectations…
    Earlier this year Gazprom boss Alexei Miller predicted that Europe would rely on Russia for record imports of natural gas as domestic production plunges.
    Gazprom was responsible for almost a third of European gas demand last year, and Mr Miller said the gas giant would export even more to European buyers in 2016 as North Sea production dwindles…
    “We expect that 2016 will be a record year for us,” said Mr Miller at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum…
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/08/30/gazproms-gas-sales-to-europe-soar-by-a-third/

    20

  • #
    Rod Stuart

    Meanwhile, back here in Oz, we finally have a senator with knowledge, and we have Dr. Sarah spouting ludicrous nonsense!

    30

  • #
    ROM

    Down in the basement so just idling along and thinking!

    Well this sort of started when I got to thinking about the impact those three rigid minded, inflexible, intolerant ,hubris laden and bigoted proffessors from the Colorado Springs college might have!

    Imagine if the lifetime longetivity of the human species was a couple of hundred years long instead of just the four score years of today in the developed world and two thirds that in the still developing world.
    But humanity could still operate at the same metabolic rate and speed that is a characteristic of our existence today.

    Dictators, incompetents, alarmists, climate change stooges, bureaucrats, union thugs, incompetent and a few competent politicals always around to create trouble, professors with rigid dogmatic inflexible ideologies and beliefs in positions of influence and power for a 100 years or even close to 150 years instead of the quarter of a century, the 25 or so years or less of today, would occupy positions of power in our social structures, industry , academia, political and bureaucracy and in the social structures that are the cement that holds our communities and societies together.

    With that level of time in a position of power, the full dictatorial and usually most nasty characteristics of the human race would ensure that No deviation at all would be any longer be allowed, no matter how minor the deviation from the accepted, by the very long established elite, current orthodoxy across so many sectors of mankind’s existence.

    Such a deviation, a thought expressed perhaps would no longer be permitted at all if it deviated or challenged in any way the established orthodoxy as believed by the power elite in almost an endless number of pursuits, ideologies and beliefs, academic and scientific nostrums and etc by those who through multi decades, a century perhaps or more of power grasping, back stabbing and worse and political maneuvering, have permanently established themselves at or near the apex of a power structure.

    Such a long human life span of a couple of centuries whilst still operating at our current metabolic rates would lead to stagnation on a colossal scale and / or a complete breakdown in human society with a consequent chaos and death and destruction on a colossal scale.
    Thats if such a broad scale society such as we have today could ever be established and stable outside of a tribal type social structure allied with a very long lived human species in the first place.

    The present life span and working life and influence span of years has led to a constant change and even some turmoil as the generations move on every couple of decades and new ideas, thinking , beliefs, ideologies, political structures and etc are established for a short time.
    A Time that is of limited duration which constrains the ability of any specific group or individual to permanently change the human race and the very substance of our existence on this planet.

    Only a very few humans have left their permanent imprint on the human race.

    To name a few , Alexander the Great, Jesus of Nazareth and the Christian religion, Buddha, Mohammed, Ghenghis Khan and the destruction of the great cities of Central Asia and 10% of the world’s then population slaughtered by his armies plus his extending of power led to the complete change in the history and kingdoms and powers of European continent, Napoleon, Marx and Engels and Stalin. Hitler, Hirohito and Tojo, Mao Zedong and his estimated 40 million dead from just one famine he created
    And others as well that one can think of .
    But out of the many tens of billions who have ever lived, the numbers of those individuals who have changed history and the human race is incredibly tiny.

    Nearly all of them except Jesus and Buddha were dictators or dictator enabling individuals who professed some human based and spurious ideological reasons for their embarking on the conquest of other nations and peoples.

    None of them lasted for more than than around three decades or so and the world recovered quite quickly from their depredations as the human race replaced its losses.

    Now imagine a Ghenghis Khan, a Stalin, a Hitler, a Pol Pot ,a Mao Zedong who could live and exercise untrammeled power for a century or more over nations and peoples and the stagnation that would inevitably follow as the dictator group at the apex of power exercised untrammeled control over every aspect of its citizens lives so as to remain at that apex of power.

    Witness the history of the USSR both both during Stalin’s regime and towards the end of Stalin’s life and the stagnation that followed for the next near 40 years until, rotten to the core in almost every way, the Soviet empire collapsed in 1991.

    With the life span we humans have today, each and everyone of us no matter how powerful and how high up the apex of influence and power we might be, everything that we may have wrought in our limited life time can be and will nearly always be overturned, altered and even dispensed with if it is deleterious in some way by the succeeding generations.

    Perhaps our advancement as species over the ages past can be put down to the fact that we live long enough to create and implement and build on new ideas, thoughts, beliefs and etc.

    But we don’t live long enough to become so entrenched in the power structures and in ideological beliefs so as to prevent other’s ideas and thoughts and beliefs and concepts from also eventually being seen and considered by others and therefore the coming to fruition of those ideas and concepts after our own limited time due to our 7 to 8 decade long but still limited lifetimes on this planet is past.

    Mankind’s whole existence as a species amounts to a form of a semi organised chaos out of which he grasps the items that will, he hopes, deal him a better hand next time around.

    And so we progress,
    Two steps forward,
    One and half steps back.

    But always, always eventually moving onward and forward once again.

    And those professors of intolerance, ignorance and bigotry;
    Here today!
    Gone tomorrow!
    Remembered for a short time only for their intolerance and ignorance and their openly displayed ignorance and hubris.

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      OriginalSteve

      Yeah the problem is that if left un-challenged, the damage these clowns create flows into the next generation of students and thinking….this is the time to truly train our kids in how to think laterally and to be open that the powers that be are trying to nobble them mentally so they can be easily enslaved. Paraphrase it how you want, but maintaining freedom requires a fight from time to time.

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    Thermalization explains why CO2 (or any other noncondensing ghg) has no significant effect on climate.

    Global average water vapor is increasing. This has a warming effect which is countering the on-going cooling effect of dwindling numbers of sunspots and declining average sea surface temperature (declining temperature phase of the net of ocean cycles). Sunspot time-integral plus net of all ocean cycles plus effect of water vapor increase provides a 98% match to measurements 1895-2015 at http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com

    Increasing water vapor increases the probability of heavy rain and flooding.

    Switching from coal to natural gas adds water vapor.

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    • #
      tom0mason

      A slight quibble on your phrase
      “Switching from coal to natural gas adds water vapor.”

      Burning coal releases water vapor too, there is ancient water locked in the coal itself, that amount depends on the quality of the coal, but also water is form when coal is burned.

      An approximation of the water released can be found here (IMO it is not insignificant). See Page 107.
      http://personal.utulsa.edu/~kenneth-weston/chapter3.pdf

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      • #

        tom – Thanks for the link. Lots of interesting stuff on coal variation, chemistry, combustion products, etc.

        I did’t realize that the statement could be also interpreted to imply that burning coal did not produce water vapor. Of course I know better and meant added to the water vapor from using coal. Perhaps I should have said ‘increases water vapor’. Thanks for the comment.

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    pat

    a tale of two “climate activists”:

    1 Sept: Hollywood Reporter: Gary Baum: Leonardo DiCaprio, the Malaysian Money Scandal and His “Unusual” Foundation
    Set up not as a nonprofit but instead as a donor-advised fund (DAF) attached to the California Community Foundation, which is a nonprofit, the LDF therefore is not required to file itemized public disclosures about its own revenue, expenditures and disbursements…
    The LDF wasn’t always a donor-advised fund. For its first decade, it was a small nonprofit run by DiCaprio’s mother, Irmelin, distributing $1.6 million in 2008, its final year before dissolving its status to join the CCF. (DiCaprio’s father, George, and noted economist ***Jeffrey Sachs, director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, rounded out the board.)…
    ***That one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood — whom United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2014 designated as a U.N. Messenger of Peace, with a special focus on climate change — has been sainted by his professional and social circles for his globe-trotting do-gooding may have permitted him to operate with comparatively little scrutiny so far. Notes Daniel Borochoff, president of Chicago-based CharityWatch: “[DAFs’] structure allows them to shirk accountability. They aren’t obligated to tell you, as a donor, anything. [DiCaprio’s] able to fundraise with one because he’s such a huge international celebrity. If you were an unknown, it would be a lot harder because people would quickly start asking questions.”
    http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/leonardo-dicaprio-malaysian-money-scandal-920199

    ***Nasheed still has faith in the UN?

    31 Aug: Times of India: Maldives issues arrest warrant for ex-president Mohamed Nasheed
    COLOMBO, SRI LANKA: Nasheed, the Maldives’ first democratically elected president, recently won political asylum in Britain after being granted permission to travel there for treatment while serving the sentence for a terror-related offence.
    “A court order (has been) issued for arrest of former president Mohamed Nasheed,” the government said in a statement, issued after Nasheed flew to neighbouring Sri Lanka.
    “The Maldives correctional service is seeking to have him brought back to serve the remainder of his 13-year sentence,” the statement said, without detailing how it planned to seek his return…
    Nasheed, a climate change activist who was also imprisoned during the three-decade rule of former strongman Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, was elected president in 2008.
    He rose to international prominence when he hosted a cabinet meeting underwater to draw attention to the threat global warming posed to the atoll nation’s existence…
    ***Sources close to Nasheed said he was “keen” to discuss the Maldives turmoil with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is due to arrive in Colombo late Wednesday on a two-day visit for talks with Sri Lankan leaders…
    http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/Maldives-issues-arrest-warrant-for-ex-president-Mohamed-Nasheed/articleshow/53945094.cms

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    Brunswick_KungFu

    Notice how Ed got scared when Jo’s crappy argument got brought into context? A similar line on a vaccine denier websit goes, “I was studying medicine, but the wouldn’t let me discuss MMR-Autism connection, oh woe is me”. Not only are you full of shit, you’re fucking pussies. Bring back the notch mofos. When is it going to be published? Dickheads.

    [Delightful Brunswick! We’ll save this for some good laughs. Just so I’m clear, if I was “scared” but still didn’t need to cuss and swear, what pray tell are you?] ED

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      Used both your neurons to come up with this?

      If only I’d argued “we’re right because they won’t let us discuss it” — then you’d have half a crappy crass point.

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        EyesWideOpen

        Wow, he used both his F-word neuron, and his S-word neuron … and all in one sentence!

        I believe Brunswick is well qualified to be an IPCC preferred peer reviewer (because they don’t review but do accept opinion), and at least a Deacon in the Church of Christ Carbon.

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      AndyG55

      Brunswich just KungFu’d himself in the mouth !

      A product of non-education, without a doubt.

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        ROM

        Thank you Brunswick_ Kung Fu;

        You have certainly just told everybody who comes to Jo’s site just what type of very unpleasant, low intelligence, green inner city Brunswick dwelling, latte sipping, goat cheese circle bigot you really are.

        I will grant you that you might know how to spell “climate” which probably makes you close to the professorial class standard amongst your associates.

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        Yonniestone

        That Brunswick KungFu is one tough ‘mofo’ (who uses that?)

        If Brunswick got into a fight with themselves I’d bet they’d win.

        This is surely a wind up no?…..and no it isn’t me.

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      AndyG55

      Why would the professors need to even make that statement UNLESS they intended to use the farce of “Climate Change™” as some sort of crutch in their meaningless subject.

      Unless they were going to try ram their far-left agenda driven climate based garbage down the student’s throats.

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    Shane

    Off topic. Was hoping for some guidance. I’ve been having a debate with a warmist on a news website, and I’ve run into a problem. How do I explain to someone that the earth’s atmosphere is not a closed system according to physics by any definition?

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      tom0mason

      Tell them to look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EarthAtmosphereBig.jpg
      a graphic of a section of atmosphere from ground level to space.

      This is part of Wikipedia’s much edited page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth .

      Also please be aware that when temperature, weather and climate are mentioned usually people are referring to air movements etc., below cloud height, within the troposphere, below the tropopause. What happens at the tropopause is very important (jet-stream, ozone, very fast wind, rapid cooling area, etc.), as is everything above it within layers that reflect and radiate infrared back to space.

      Also note that all the layer are dynamic changing in volume and shape during the day/night and seasonal cycles as well as the amount of heat or cooling affecting them.
      Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_circulation
      for information on how the dynamic air circulation approximately moves.

      Finally there is http://earth.nullschool.net/ and https://www.windyty.com/?2016-01-16-12,27.045,6.769,2 where these layers and their movements are displayed graphically.

      It ain’t no closed system.

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        tom0mason

        From: https://www.quora.com/Is-the-earth-a-closed-system-with-the-Sun-providing-the-sole-input

        As much energy leaves Earth as deep infrared as it gets in visible and near infrared. Plants keep a small fraction of this energy to turn CO2 and water into oxygen, sugars, cellulose, and plant oils. This potential energy only to be released again as heat to be radiated to space as infrared when plants are eaten and or decay. Earth is not closed but open. We’d roast otherwise.

        “No, the earth is not a closed system, since it receives energy from the sun and loses energy to space.”
        A ‘closed’ system is one which includes its own supply of energy, and which also does not lose energy. Obviously, the earth loses energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation, and most of the energy emitted by the sun also is lost to space. The system you are talking about includes the sun, which provides most of the energy for the sol/earth system. (There is also the kinetic energy of the planet’s rotation and its revolution about the sun, gravitational energy, chemical energy stored in reserves of fossil fuels, some energy from radioactive decay of various elements and the heat that is accumulated in the lower layers of the earth.) Usually when we think about the various energy systems of the earth, we are concerned primarily with what happens on the surface, bodies of water, and the atmosphere. The sun provides most of the energy for these, but tidal energy comes from the stored kinetic energy of the earth’s rotation and revolution, combined with gravitational energy in the pull between the earth and the moon and the sun.

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        bobl

        It’s open because energy is not contained to the inside of the system. That-is there are energy leaks in the defined boundary everywhere.

        Take a lit light bulb, it is an open system, because the energy out != energy in but if you include the battery powering it, its a closed system.

        Climastrologists make the mistake of considering the radiant earth/sun system as closed, even as they disregard gravity, motion, nuclear and electric energies streaming around the solar system. They treat the earth system as closed when it is in fact open. They also ignore friction. This is shown by the WRONG implicit assumption that IR Out = Light IN. In the absence of gravitation, electricity and friction maybe this would be close to true but in it’s presence all bets are off. Energy can change form and most of it degrades to heat, motion and gravitation are stupendous forces that leak energy to heat

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      tom0mason

      A simpler answer is to understand that usually the advocates of ‘climate models’ believe in the closed system. Our climate is also affected by space weather.

      http://earth.nullschool.net/ and https://www.windyty.com/?2016-01-16-12,27.045,6.769,2 where these layers and their movements are displayed graphically and show that the system is not a closed system.

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    • #
      RobK

      Shane,
      The earth’s systems are open to the universe in all dimensions, it’s difficult to envisage a more open system. All manner of stuff and energy is entering and leaving all the time. Even the earth itself consumes and releases water, gases, energy and particulates that influence climate and weather randomly

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      Shane

      Thanks guys.

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    Bruce

    I think one of my sons just sold his house in Colorado USA. Smart move.

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    AndyG55

    Is it just me, or the site really slow to respond today ?

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    • #
      ROM

      Site is very, very slow responding since yesterday evening [ 1st Sept ]

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      • #
        tom0mason

        Thanks ROM,
        Yes it is a lot slower than usual, I thought it was my cranky connection. Then going to other site around the world all loaded ok.

        I wonder if some lefty kinder-minds are playing ping-go with the site.

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    OOPS! The Washington Times

    John Carson, a member of the University of Colorado Board of Regents, said he plans to make inquires Thursday about an email from three University of Colorado at Colorado Springs professors who advised students to drop the class if they dispute climate change.

    “If it’s accurate, the email even limits the sources of research that students can use,” Mr. Carson said. “For there to be a prohibition on debate and dialogue on a particular public policy issue at the university is certainly alarming.”

    Can hardly wait for the Board of Regents to meet.

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    • #
      AndyG55

      As I said above….

      Why would the professors need to even make that statement UNLESS they intended to use the farce of “Climate Change™” as some sort of crutch in their meaningless subject.

      Unless they were going to try ram their far-left, agenda-driven, climate-change-based garbage down the student’s throats.

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    ren

    The increase in the level of lava in the volcano Kilauea as a result of strong geomagnetic vibrations.
    https://losyziemi.pl/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Kilauea-Poziom-lawy-2016.09.02.jpg

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    pat

    Vatican: “Show Mercy to our Common Home”: Pope’s message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, 01.09.2016
    The following is the full text of the Holy Father’s first message on the occasion of the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, celebrated today, 1 September.
    1. The earth cries out …
    Global warming continues, due in part to human activity: 2015 was the warmest year on record, and 2016 will likely be warmer still. This is leading to ever more severe droughts, floods, fires and extreme weather events. Climate change is also contributing to the heart-rending refugee crisis…
    2. … for we have sinned
    God gave us the earth “to till and to keep” in a balanced and respectful way…
    for human beings to degrade the integrity of the earth by causing changes in its climate…
    During this Jubilee Year, let us learn to implore God’s mercy for those sins against creation that we have not hitherto acknowledged and confessed…
    4. Changing course…
    One concrete case is the “ecological debt” between the global north and south. Repaying it would require treating the environments of poorer nations with care and providing the financial resources and technical assistance needed to help them deal with climate change and promote sustainable development.
    The protection of our common home requires a growing global political consensus. Along these lines, I am gratified that in September 2015 the nations of the world adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, and that, in December 2015, they approved the Paris Agreement on climate change, which set the demanding yet fundamental goal of halting the rise of the global temperature…
    It is up to citizens to insist that this happen, and indeed to advocate for even more ambitious goals…
    http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2016/09/01/160901b.html

    ***nothing political! haha…

    1 Sept: Radio Vatican: Presentation of Pope Francis’ Message of Day of Prayer for Creation
    Presentations were given by the President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Cardinal Peter Turkson; the Secretary for the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Bishop Brian Farrell; and the author of the book The Guardian of Mercy, Terence Ward…
    The full text of the prepared remarks are below…

    Cardinal Peter K.A. Turkson
    Pope Francis praises the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on climate change last year. But for this agenda to succeed, it will require a heroic amount of political will and a heroic effort by business and economic interests…
    This is will require a complete shift away from fossil fuels toward renewables by about 2070…
    Pope Francis says it is up to citizens to insist that these commitments are honoured, and to advocate for more ambitious goals. As one example from Laudato Si’, he suggests that social pressure—including from boycotting certain products—can force businesses to consider their environmental footprint and patterns of production. The same logic animates the fossil fuel divestment movement…

    Intervention of di Terence Ward, author of the book The Guardian of Mercy
    The secular French philosopher Edgar Morin hailed LAUDATO SI as a “call for a new civilization.” Bill McKibben, the noted ecologist, says “it may be the most important document in recent times.”…
    The Pope’s vision reaches ***far beyond any political labels…
    Governor Jerry Brown of California, at the Conference of Mayors here last year said: “we need to think of instances where radical change occurred…
    http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2016/09/01/presentation_pope_francis_message_day_of_prayer_for_creation/1255096

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    pat

    when an author, Terence Ward, mentions McKibben & Jerry Brown in the warm-up to the Pope’s CAGW message, i am suspicious. bear with me.

    in comment #35, i posted a link to an editorial in the Colorado Springs Gazette, criticising the UCCS faculty.
    interestingly, the same newspaper has a lengthy piece by a David Gibson, about Ward & the Pope:

    30 Aug: Colorado Springs Gazette: David Gibson: A Caravaggio masterpiece on mercy calls to Pope Francis across the centuries
    (David Gibson is a national reporter for RNS – Religion News Service)
    “A dramatic convergence has taken place between Pope Francis’ teachings and Caravaggio’s message,” writes Terence Ward in his new book on the painting, titled “The Guardian of Mercy.”…
    Even Ward’s book represents a stroke of providence in that he started it years ago after wandering into the church where the painting has hung for centuries, only to have his laptop with the first manuscript stolen.
    The delay meant that the publication of Ward’s book coincided with the pope’s Jubilee Year of Mercy, and a revolutionary pontificate that would seem to dovetail so easily with Caravaggio’s boundary-pushing style…
    Little wonder that his book is blurbed by the likes of Pete Hamill, the famed chronicler of New York’s streets, and that at a recent book party for Ward, Bible scholar Elaine Pagels praised the author and artist (“It’s a story of grace,” she said) while William Vendley, head of Religions for Peace International, recounted how much the story moved him.
    “Irony is too meek a word for how mercy can penetrate its antithesis,” he said. In San Francisco, California Gov. Jerry Brown — a former seminarian — and his wife attended a lecture on the book…
    Ward at the New York book launch: ‘He’s the artist of the poor. Our artist!’
    Will Francis join in this chorus of hosannas?…
    “In the end, his art isn’t about bishops in silk robes giving handouts to the needy,” (Angelo) Esposito (a onetime city sewer worker who in one of the city’s typically dysfunctional reorganizations was shuttled to look after this backwater masterwork) tells Ward at one point. “It’s about simple people helping one another. He’s the artist of the poor. Our artist! There’s no one else like him. It’s all there! … What more do you want?”
    http://gazette.com/a-caravaggio-masterpiece-on-mercy-calls-to-pope-francis-across-the-centuries/article/1573155

    about the writer: David Gibson is an award-winning religion journalist, author and filmmaker. He writes for RNS and until recently covered the religion beat for AOL’s Politics Daily. He blogs at Commonweal magazine, and has written two books on Catholic topics, the latest a biography of Pope Benedict XVI.

    as for Ward, there’s no Wikipedia, and only brief bio on Amazon in a review, describing him as a “Colorado-based management consultant”.

    ***Ward calls the Pope link-up “serendipity”. doubt it:

    Facebook: The Guardian of Mercy: Been invited to speak on Sept 1 at the Vatican at a press conference for the celebration of the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. Pope Francis will break with convention and announce a NEW work of mercy – “Show Mercy for our Common Home.” Bold and Visionary. Ecumenical and Ecological. A modern work of mercy for our modern epoch.
    In this one act, he links his Year of Mercy and the ecological message anchored in “Laudato Si” (the encyclical). And, strangely enough, it all ties in with “The Guardian of Mercy.” ***Serendipity.
    https://www.facebook.com/theguardianofmercy/

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    pat

    getting to the heart of the matter – Open Society Institue now Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the United Nations, globalist Trilateral Commission!
    read all:

    Religions for Peace International: Mr. Terence Ward
    Author
    Mr. Terence Ward was raised in Saudi Arabia and Iran. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and received his Masters from the International Management Institute (IMI) and the University of Geneva…
    After receiving the International Diploma of Humanitarian Assistance in Geneva, he also served on humanitarian missions with the ***Open Society Institute in Burma and the ***United Nations in East Timor during the referendum for independence…
    Recently, he contributed to the Trilateral Commission paper—Is There a “Plan B” for Iran? He also contributed to the position paper of the Global Business Policy Council of A.T. Kearny on The Economics of Islam which explored the evolution of Islamic societies in the global economy…
    http://www.rfp.org/mr-terence-ward

    on to our Religion News Service journo, David Gibson:

    2014: National Catholic Reporter: David Gibson: More protests over Koch gift to Catholic University of America
    A group of leading Catholic activists and academics has renewed criticism of The Catholic University of America over a large gift from the billionaire industrialist and conservative funder Charles Koch and over a school official’s statements that seem to endorse Koch’s questioning of climate change and the right of public workers to unionize…
    The critics’ letter noted that Pope Francis has been outspoken on the Christian duty to protect the environment — a cause the Koch brothers have strongly opposed.
    On global warming it also quotes former Pope Benedict XVI, who wrote: “Can we remain indifferent before the problems associated with such realities as climate change, desertification, the deterioration and loss of productivity in vast agricultural areas, the pollution of rivers and aquifers?”…
    Other CUA defenders have said the Koch critics are themselves tainted because they received help in publicizing the letter from the progressive religious lobby Faith in Public Life, which receives some funding from the Open Society Institute backed by liberal-leaning billionaire George Soros.
    Faith in Public Life says it receives about $200,000 a year from Open Society, about 13 percent of its annual budget. Officials there say they work with Catholic leaders in support of Catholic teaching, whereas Koch money is used to oppose Catholic teaching…
    https://www.ncronline.org/news/faith-parish/more-protests-over-koch-gift-catholic-university-america

    u can’t make this stuff up.

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    pat

    comment #66 is in moderation and is connecting the final dots to the previous two comments.
    [Sorry about missing the fact that it was in moderation, and missing your request to release it. All the mods were busy elsewhere, it would seem -Fly]

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    Andy Richards

    Wow! These people have no shame. Propaganda masquerading as education. This institution should not be getting tax payer contributions. Nor should it be getting any self-respecting students.

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    Harry Twinotter

    ““We will not, at any time, debate the science of climate change’”

    Correct. Science is not a debate. No point in wasting time on anti-scientific fringe theories.

    05

    • #
      Mark D.

      No point in wasting time on anti-scientific fringe theories.

      You mean fringe theories like Anthropogenic Climate Change?

      Then I agree

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      Roy Hogue

      Science is not a debate.

      So Harry, it must be something else then. And from the things you say I think you mean it to be a guessing game — whose peer reviewer is the more believable or whose research findings are the more in line with the party line, something like that, yes? So what then is science worth if there can be no debate? Remember that one of the most famous scientists of all time, Albert Einstein, a man whose theories shook the world of science like an earthquake, a man whose brain was preserved after his death in the hope that someday it would be possible to examine it and figure out what made him the genius he’s considered to be, made the simple point that no matter how strong his case for his theory of relativity was, it would only take one example falsifying it to prove him wrong. And ever since then there has been debate about his theories, special and general, what they mean and whether each of the points contained in them are correct or not. And now his theories are being questioned again because of more recent findings and theories which themselves need to be examined to find out if they hold up. That is science Harry. Your version is just wishful thinking — you want climate change to be true regardless of evidence, regardless of facts, regardless of honest skepticism about it, regardless of anything. You just want what you want.

      So here you are saying, “Yes, it’s correct. We will not at any time, debate the science of climate change,” echoing some university teachers whose very attitude is an insult to someone like me who actually taught college students for nearly 17 years. It would appear that you must be either the wisest, smartest man who ever considered science or the biggest fool who ever spoke a word on the subject. I’ll leave it to you to decide which one you are. But either way you may think it is, to me you look like a mushroom growing under a rotting stump in the shadow of huge trees in the middle of a forest you do not understand. You just do not compare.

      Have a great day!

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    pat

    1 Sept: LifeSiteNews: Lisa Bourne: How billionaire George Soros is trying to hijack the Catholic Church for his progressive agenda
    Soros, a multimillion-dollar Hillary Clinton donor, has also financed the dissenting groups Catholics for Choice, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, and Catholics United…
    ***(Elizabeth) Yore, part of the Heartland Institute Delegation that went to the Vatican in April 2015 to urge Pope Francis to reconsider his trust in UN population control proponents that promote climate change, said Soros is “using the head of the Catholic Church to influence this key voting block” with the “bully pulpit of the papacy” to guarantee Hillary Clinton’s election.
    Soros operatives entrenched in the Vatican directed Pope Francis’ Environmental Agenda in 2015, according to Yore, by delivering for the billionaire and the UN an apostolic exhortation on climate change as well as a prized papal endorsement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Pope’s apostolic blessing on the Paris Climate Treaty…
    https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/soros-lurks-in-the-shadows-trying-to-bring-down-catholic-church?utm_source=LifePetitions+petition+signers&utm_campaign=5b871375b2-Update_Catholic_9_29_2_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c5c75ce940-5b871375b2-397731273

    23 Aug: TheRemnant: Elizabeth Yore: THE POPE’S BOSS — Wikileaks: Pope and Soros An Unholy Alliance
    http://www.remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/2714-the-pope-s-boss-wikileaks-pope-and-soros-an-unholy-alliance

    23 Aug: TheRemnant: Elizabeth Yore: Pope Maker: The Soros Syndicate
    Jeffrey Sachs, Special Advisor to UN Secretary General on the MDGs also enjoys a 30 year long economic relationship as a Soros stalwart, close advisor and grantee of Soros’ millions. Sachs headed to the Vatican to craft the blueprint for the Vatican’s rollout of the theology of global warming…
    http://www.remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/2718-the-pope-s-boss

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    Reed Coray

    I haven’t read all of the comments on this thread–so maybe I’m repeating what other people have written.

    As I read the tea leaves, the class being discussed starts with the premise that AGW is true, and based on that premise tells people what the future portends and what they should do to avoid future problems.

    I would like to know how this differs from a religion and/or a con game. Many, if not most, religious classes start with the premise that their beliefs and tenets are true, and proceed to tell you (a) what those tenets/beliefs mean and how you should behave to avoid future problems.

    People running a con start by telling you to believe things they say are true; and to either avoid disaster or to reap untold rewards your behavior and actions should follow their recommended actions.

    If people want to blindly accept the tenets/beliefs of either a religion and/or a con, that’s their prerogative. To have a university advocate such a methodology as a means to “prepare students for the future” is ludicrous. Blindly accepting a set of tenets as being “the truth” and basing your actions on those tenets also seems like a not-too-bright way to live your life. If you disagree, I have a plan that will relieve you of your worldly holdings but guarantee you eternal bliss starting at some future time.

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    Sadly these tactics are not new and have been proven to work in the past. [snip]

    [Sorry this is all off topic. Light up another one and tell us why?] ED

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    Really? Explaining the origin / precedent and where AGW ‘scientists’ derived their confidence to exclude any opposing voices and train up their own ‘disciples’ to spread their pseudo-religion – is off topic? Start with this;

    http://www.prwatch.org/node/8767

    If you want to look closer at this specific tactic of excluding all opposition, as it relates to tobacco CONTROL, it is outlined mainly in Article 15 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

    I find it utterly bizarre that you are unable to identify the clear and obvious parallels between the two campaigns and the tactics they employ. Did you think this was invented by the AGW team? I can only assume that you are one of the victims of the earlier anti-smoker propaganda campaign that I pointed out in my earlier comment.

    That you have excluded my comment and explained it with a sarcastic comment of your own, suggests that you have indeed fallen for the earlier propaganda campaign and been fully assimilated into the anti-smoker fold. Are you one of those who Carl Sagan refers to here?;

    “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

    If your intention is to expose the shenanigans of those who wish to control others by underhand means, junk science, etc. for personal or organisational gain, then we are on the SAME SIDE here. However, If you cannot break free from the original anti-smoker propaganda, used as a means of social control, then what hope is there for those presently under the spell of AGW ‘science’?

    [You are right that accurate science and truth should be the goal. Trouble is, with regard to tobacco, there is pretty solid evidence that Big Tobacco interfered. We don’t need nor want the pro-AGW types to falsely attribute AGW skepticism to Big Oil or Big Energy. Our Skepticism of AGW is based upon science. Regardless, it is off topic to this thread. Feel free to continue to post here at Joannenova.com.au but please stay close to the topic.]ED

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