June 2015 Open Thread

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When you’re feeding billions of varying measurements that are individually thousands of time larger than the single tiny amount of change you are trying to measure annually, what do you think might be the percentage of error?

So, apart from the unsubstantiated assertion about the size of the errors on individual measurements, he's profoundly incompetent - no understanding of the difference between systemically biased errors and unbiased errors and hence the (apparent) attempts to conflate the two, and no understanding of how the latter can be massively reduced via increasing the number of measurements.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

"When you’re feeding billions of varying measurements that are individually thousands of time larger than the single tiny amount of change you are trying to measure annually, what do you think might be the percentage of error?"

O, okay, Lotharsson said in #92.

Drongo been brainwashed by climate revisionist Bob Carter, who is trying to get the concept of 'average' out the world. He might be that criminal, Carter, himself, in fact.

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

And Bern, perhaps you might be able to explain how the four organisations [Aviso, CSIRO, NOAA and the U of C] eventually all come up with ~ 3mm per year SLR?

What an amazing coincidence. The things you can do with statistics.

If you're stupid enough to believe in Doltoids dancing angels, that is.

But they realise it's a nonsense number and now they're all backing off because nothing else agrees and the tide gauges are way less.

A bit of the usual out of control science "groupthink"?

JPL have also told them SL satellites and GRACE don't work because they don't have a decent reference frame but maybe in a couple of years they might get some accuracy:

http://www.gps.gov/governance/advisory/meetings/2011-06/bar-sever.pdf

So hang in there Doltoids, maybe you can stay in your virtual world for a bit longer and never need to look out the window.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

JPL have also told them SL satellites and GRACE don’t work

You really need to improve your reading ability Spanky.
Improving resolution is not an admission they 'don't work'.

Chek, when they've been fudged and adjusted off the face of the earth to provide a 3mm pa SLR and the reference frame is wrong, they're no more than statistical garbage.

Poor ol' Bern, the self confessed lover of this altimetry crap is in deep doo doo with his Doltoid dancers.

And what about all your melting land ice in the Antarctic from GRACIE?

More statistical crap too, Bernie luv. That's why there is no SLR.

Hey, Bernie Luv!!! You've gone very quiet.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

Spanky, best to just admit to yourself the technology is way over your head - (no pun intended).

Remember how I had to explain how satellites orbit around the 'centre of mass' to correct your half-baked self-invented theory previously?

There's nothing wrong with not knowing - it's putting forward your not-even-half-baked theories as if you knew what the fuck you were talking about that's wrong.
But then you do that all the time, right Spanky?

What an amazing coincidence.

"Amazing coincidence" is conspiratorial ideation that relies on the measured values being grossly divergent from reality, a presumption that you have not established by a long shot.

If the value is roughly in line with reality then it's not amazing and not a coincidence - just different groups measuring the same thing with sufficient accuracy.

And you still haven't even bothered to update your thinking with the plain and simple fact that unlike you, the rest of us aren't advocating a position on climate science that we keenly want to be true, so even if your conspiratorial ideation there was correct it would lead to the opposite conclusion to the one you drew. If we were going to lie about the physics because we found the results uncomfortable, we'd lie and say that everything is just hunky dory - so your fanciful notion of why people don't accept your handwaving is complete bollocks, and for reasons even you should be able to understand.

And in the meantime you stumble on, merrily contradicting yourself every few comments and foolishly refusing to take stock of the resulting errors in your thinking when they are pointed out to you.

Wow has you totally pegged.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

Drongo.

As you obviously missed it first time, a simple question for you. Where’s the specification document/published paper that indicates that the satellite altimetry error is on the order of “metres” in measurement of sea level?

No waffle, just tell us how you know that the errors the rest of us have put to you are wrong.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

Drongo, when you've explained to us why the physicists and engineers who build satellite atimeters are wrong could you explain why the oceanographers of the world are wrong, why the climatologists and statisticians and mathematicians of the world are wrong, why the ecologists of the world are wrong, why the glaciers and ice caps and species ranges and phenologies are wrong, and why a barnacle scraper with no clue about science whatsoever is right?

Point to the evidence. Don't dribble your ideological drivel onto the blankie on your lap - point to the evidence.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

Bern, old thing, when and/or if you ever find the fudge factor needed for all four satellites to sing from the same hymn book you might get a better idea on error.

But your Doltoid Dancers have always been statistical garbage haven't they?

Deep down, you religious luvvies suspected it even though you would never let the real world intrude into your ideology.

But now that you have a better GRASP of the situation it is ever more difficult to maintain the BS.

Oh, how it must hurt. Please don't think that I don't feel your pain.

But then you go and ruin what's left of your ragged remnant cred by quoting Bloomberg's climate widget:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/27/bloombergs-made-up-climate-widget/

How the mighty have fallen.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

Spanky, has it ever occurred to you just why you're reduced to rolling around in the pigshit version of science as expounded by Daly et al, williwatts and Codling in order to make your point?
Hint: It isn't because they're leading authorities, or even competent or coherent. No, it's because of your batshit ignorant, fearful conservative, confused by the modern world crank magnetism.

Spanky, has it ever occurred to you just why you're reduced to rolling around in the pigshit version of science as expounded by Daly et al, williwatts and Codling in order to make your point?
Hint: It isn't because they're leading authorities, or even competent or coherent. No, it's because of your batshit ignorant, fearful conservative, confused by the modern world crank magnetism.

Damn my fat html flubbing fingers.

Tried to post this a couple of days ago, but it appears to have been moderated.

Skipper Washed Of Boat At Night By Heavy Seas
MOOLOOLABA, Thurs. — The skipper of the 30ft. fishing boat Roma was washed overboard by heavy seas off Double Island Point, 35 miles south-east of Maryborough. yesterday.
He is Richard Prentice who, with Patrick Brownrigg, his companion in an adventurous trip, crossed the bar in the Roma at Mooloolaba at high tide to day. The boat left Townsville on January 13 for Brisbane, and arrived at Double Island Point last Saturday. A heavy easterly ground swell from the cyclone compelled the crew to anchor, necessitating moving the boat from shallow to deep water. On Wednesday, at 2 a.m., a tremendous sea hit the Roma, putting it on its beam ends and smashing to pieces a dinghy which was on board. The hatches of the ice box were swept overboard and the engine room was swamped. Prentice and Brownrigg cleared away the debris and were lifting the anchor when Prentice was washed over board. He managed, however, to swim back and clamber aboard the launch. A course was then set for Mooloolaba, which was reached 12 hours later after battling against heavy east-south-east seas, there was a big break on the bar, and Prentice, not having local knowledge, decided to go on to Caloundra and enter Moreton Bay by the North-west Channel. The seas were too heavy, however, and they were forced to turn back to Mooloolaba. All night they had to steer in circles, and decided that if the bad weather continued they would have to beach the boat in the morning, as they were nearly out of fuel, food, and water. They built a raft, as Brownrigg could not swim, and stood off the bar until high tide to-day.

By Archivist (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

chek, it's your fat fumbling brain you should be blaming.

When Doltoids live by the BS sword they die by it too.

Refute the facts, chekkie, don't rant.

You can't, of course because you don't have any.

When you have been existing on regurgitated reconstructions for so long you are incapable of learning facts.

This is typical of the sort of BS you thrive on [from today's ABC news courtesy BoM]:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-30/tropical-low-forming-of-queenslan…

Queensland has had many July cyclones in the past. I have helped save houses from falling into the ocean because of them.

That's the problem with living in the real world, there are too many wankers like you who don't know it exists:

http://hardenup.org/umbraco/customContent/media/1153_EastCoastLows_1846…

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

Bern, old thing, when and/or if you ever find the fudge factor needed for all four satellites to sing from the same hymn book you might get a better idea on error.

Inother words you can't source any credible data for your claim of satellite altimetry having an error of "metres"

Your capitulation has been duly noted, despite your blustering around the edges.

How does it feel to be completely useless at supporting anything you say Drongo?

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

"How does it feel to be completely useless at supporting anything you say Drongo?"

At least I can support the fact that SLs have not risen on the east coast in my lifetime with fact, observation and witnesses.

It's a little more substantial than your worship of now-destroyed, dopey Doltoid angels who depend on fudge factors and poor reference frames.

When you don't even know the amount of those fudge factors or how far out those reference frames are yet you are prepared to accept a one eighth of an inch yearly SLR from all four collusively guilty parties as fact, shows the depth of your integrity.

I would suggest you now stop blithering and make a firm resolution to re-enter the real world to save your soul.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

At least I can support the fact ...

I don't see how.
Your credibility went down the drain years ago.
You have no recorded or verified data.
You have senile anecdotes, which don't qualify anywhere in the real world as support of 'facts'.

But then you go and ruin what’s left of your ragged remnant cred by quoting Bloomberg’s climate widget

Seriously, you're denying the data graphed at the Bloomberg page?! If you're relying on Burton's muddle-headed take on it you're barking up the wrong tree. HoWhopper has already put that numpty down:

http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2015/06/david-burton-wattsupwiththat-denies…

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

Citing WUWT as any sort of "authority" other than for conspiratorial thinking and science denial, is not worth a second glance.

BTW, if anyone wants to see CO2 plotted with global surface temperature instead of charts of surface temp with greenhouse gas or other forcings (as the Bloomberg charts show), go here:

http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2015/04/danley-wolf-continues-long-drawn-out…

Sou, you're even funnier than bern.

How much of that 0.8c raw, unadjusted since the LIA is due to Nat Var and how much due to ACO2, would you think?

Not to mention UHIE.

Split it three ways?

That still leaves us 80% below average Nat Var.

Please get yourself into the real world.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

You do realise that Spangly is an 'unpersuadable', and in the unlikely event that anyone reading this sympathises (for that's all it amounts to) with him they're also utterly unpersuadable? Rather than wasting time 'educating' him, try something more likely to yield a result: teach the cat mahjjong, or something!...

bill, you haven't changed a bit. Even look the same. How do you manage it?

Still believing in those dancing deltoid delusions, sadly though, I see. Tell me, did you ever take my advice just a teensy weensy bit and actually look out the window since we last met?

Otherwise you always run the risk of being reduced to bern's standards by quoting hotwopper to make a point.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

Refute the facts, chekkie, don’t rant.

You can’t, of course because you don’t have any.

Repeat after me, folks: IT'S ALWAYS PROJECTION!

Remember, this is the guy who swore that the NOAA surface data for continental US showed a cooling trend since 1900, confidently citing a post at WUWT that reported on that data including graphs showing the long term trend. He was so confident that he had data on his side that he emitted this jibe:

Notice the NOAA badge on the graph and the cooling trend since 1900.

Make sure your kids see this, Bern. Hate to see them misinformed by a one eyed parent.

He then doubled down a couple of comments later:

Check that NOAA graph immediately above where they now admit that 1936 was the warmest and it has been all down hill since

and here:

Dopey Lothe, I said that it has been warming since 1934 for GISS and 1936 for NOAA.

Speaking of one-eyed (or less), there was just one - OK, two...OK more than two - teensy weensy little problems with his "facts". Even the very WUWT article he cited as proof blatantly disagreed with him, and he didn't even get the date range on the graphs correct when he cited them. The article showed graphs with trend lines from 1895 that were clearly warming, and if you calculate the trend from 1934 (GISS) or 1936 (NOAA) that is also clearly warming.

If SD tells you the sky is blue or that you have five fingers on one hand, check for yourself. His claim that everyone else doesn't have facts or "doesn't do data" only makes sense if you interpret it to mean "everyone else disagrees with my claims as to what is fact or what the data says", and that makes him (as bill says) an unpersuadable.

And don't think that he is simply deluded. At some level he appears to understand that just about everything he alleges is bullshit. I offered him a deal (with multiple options) based on his "NOAA continental US cooling since 1900" claim where if his claims were right I would have paid him thousands of dollars. He subsequently shifted the goalposts back to cooling since 1934 (GISS) or 1936 (NOAA), so I offered him a deal on that too. He didn't nibble at either one, despite several more repetitions of my offers, nor did he insult me (which he normally does quite frequently) for being so stupid as to offer those deals. It's very likely that he knows he's full of shit, but he can't admit it so he compensates by frequently posting his false claims and insulting anyone who points out what he is trying to pretend to himself isn't true - that the claims are bullshit.

He sure ain't here for the hunting.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

The problem is, "dopey Lothe", Spangled Drongo has no concept of what a "trend" actually is: he doesn't understand measurement, data, or statistics.

Spangled Drongo actually believes that a "trend" is a line joining any two arbitrary data points, independent of the body of data they belong to.

Spangled Drongo actually believes that "data" is any few isolated and unrecorded personal remembrances he happens to be holding in his otherwise clearly rather vacant mind.

Spangled Drongo's belief in what he thinks is "data" and his belief in his version of what a "trend" is are two unshakable personal beliefs that are utterly immune to education or reason.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

Drongo:
"June 29, 2015
Bern, old thing, when and/or if you ever find the fudge factor needed for all four satellites to sing from the same hymn book you might get a better idea on error."

Gosh, what kind of "fudge factors" are required to deduce global sea level trends from one vague remembrance of a King Tide 40 years ago at a point 3km inland from the sea near Brisbane, I wonder?

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

Lothe, sorry to have avoided you but my time was limited due to carrying out extra wildlife surveys this month.

The point I was making was that Moose are not dying because of AGW in conus.

Whether 1934 or 2012 is the warmest year by some .02c is not the real world causing death to wildlife. And the high quality thermometers are showing cooling there for as long as they have existed.

The modern warming that is being reconstructed on a regular basis to cool the past and warm the present is happening.

Do you deny it?

Do you also deny that satellite statistical measurement of SLR is extremely questionable?

Do you also deny that consensual groupthink of getting all that altimetry to agree to ~ 3mm pa SLR when their fudge factors had to be co-ordinated but their reference frames are known to be wrong, is believable science?

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

"blah blah blah ... is believable science?"

No, of course not - the geriatric memories and infantile statistical analysis of one observed king tide 3km inland from the ocean is "believable science".

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

sorry to have avoided you but my time was limited due to carrying out extra wildlife surveys this month.

Yeah, right! And a three year old might believe you because he hasn't figured out how to tell when he's being bullshitted yet. But adults will note that you had time to write dozens of other comments during the month, and many of them were on the same topic:

The point I was making was that Moose are not dying because of AGW in conus

That's the point you were trying and failing to make, by bullshitting about what the data shows (and you didn't even select data for the appropriate region given that moose don't live in the Arizonan deserts for example, but that's merely incompetence piled on top of gross incompetence!)

In trying to make that point you made specific claims about specific data sets and you even linked to specific articles presenting that data.

The article and the data quite clearly invalidate your specific claims, but you are so wedded to them that you state them again like this:

And the high quality thermometers are showing cooling there for as long as they have existed.

I offered you several different deals that would see me pay you thousands of dollars if this were correct. You not only didn't take any of them up, you conspicuously failed to reject them or insult me for my stupidity in your usual fashion - and now you try to Gish Gallop on to different points in the hope that this one will be dropped.

Accordingly, we all know that you know that your claims are bullshit - or you've at least been smart enough to see an accountant or a high school student who can calculate a trend and they told you that you would lose big time on any objective application of the deal terms.

You're not here for the hunting, you're here to spout ideas that you know but can't admit to yourself are wrong. I'd say the only person that you're convincing is yourself - but you're not, are you?

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

Well, Lothe, you can't say I didn't try to accept you as a rational human being but if you insist on being a loony Doltoid, that's your choice.

Just listen to yourself. When the world has warmed 0.8c in the last 165 years and the moose country arguably less you are convinced that this is killing them?

When they are free to move around in forest and open country where temperature variations would be, daily, a hundred times greater than they would experience through CC in their lifetimes?

You just can't quit your crazy dancing doltoid delusions, can you?

You re a bigger imbecile than I had you pegged for.

My suspicions were right early on. You're not worth talking to.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

...and the moose country arguably less...

Arguably? No data, eh? What's that thing you say a lot around here - "you don't do data"? Yep, it's always projection.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

Well, Lothe, you can’t say I didn’t try to accept you as a rational human being but if you insist on being a loony Doltoid, that’s your choice.

I can say that, because you did not try.

You won't take up my deal, you won't reject my deal, you won't even comment on my deal because it would be too close to admitting that all the faults you claim we suffer from are in fact your own. You merely Gish Gallop on in the hope that it will help you forget the inconvenient facts, and try to pretend that "I'm not worth talking to" so that you can pretend I am not pointing them out.

We don't forget those inconvenient facts SD. And we know that you know that they exist, and they show you are talking shit.

Seek professional help.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

A while back I observed:

Will the Moose be another casualty of the sixth extinction[?]

A taxonomic cousin, the caribou, is in dire straits from both warming and from habitat destruction, especially from the disruption of migration routes resulting from oil and gas extraction. Business as usual for a few more decades will see enough environmental and climate damage that the bioclimatic envelopes of the many (if not all) of the subspecies of caribou are likely to be pushed beyond tolerance.

Business as usual for carbon emissions past the middle of the century would almost certainly see all the North American caribou set on a path to extinction.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

Drongo, have you figured out yet why Lempriere wouldn't have been silly enough to strike a tide mark at mean sea level?

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

...my time was limited due to carrying out extra wildlife surveys this month.

In your dreams.

And no, scraping barnacles and gutting fish don't count.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 29 Jun 2015 #permalink

"when and/or if you ever find the fudge factor needed for all four satellites to sing from the same hymn book you might get a better idea on error."

You could have saved some time and effort by posting what you know of it, rather than try to pretend that you know.

Oh, that's right: you know fuck all.

Here's one you can do without straining your head: Name and Address.

It's the very minimum required for you to prove that your fiction about you and grampy having personally seen the sea level fall is true.

If you're not there, you can't have.

"…my time was limited due to carrying out extra wildlife surveys this month."

IOW swearing at the neighbour for their cat shitting on his lawn, then camping outside with a camera to "prove" that it was his neighbour's cat shitting on his lawn.

The neighbour, of course, doesn't have a cat.

Here's some arguably less. How homogenised it is only NOAA would know.

"Poor station siting in the USHCN is also the reason that NOAA’s new U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) shows July 2012 to be 75.5°F (about 2°F cooler than the USHCN. The homogenized USHCN supports AGW by artificially cooling the past and artificially warming the present."

https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/clip_image0028.jpg

And you can work out where the moose country is:
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/clip_image0065.jpg

Read Daly bern. He was told to put it there. Ross was most likely present when it was done. Ross stated in his log that's where it was put and when you have a stone cliff showing the whole tide range at low tide it is the easiest precise point to ascertain.

And for the info of doubting doltoids I have been doing Albert's Lyrebird surveys for the last 20 years. I have been doing other wildlife surveys on a daily basis with weekly summaries for the last 25 years and if any of you would like to join me simply provide your email address and I will be in touch.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

"Here’s some arguably less. "

Word odd writing thing stuff. Sense none made.

Normal.

Drongo, you seem to be dodging this very substantive part of the narrative:

Ross continues: I may here observe, that it is not essential that the mark be made exactly at the mean level of the ocean, indeed it is more desirable that it should be rather above the reach of the highest tide: it is, however, important that it be made on some part of a solid cliff, not liable to rapid disintegration, and the exact distance above the mean level (which may also be marked more slightly) recorded on a plate of copper, well protected from the weather, by placing a flat stone with cement between, upon the plain surface or platform which should constitute the mark from which the level of mean tide should be
measured.

So Ross himself recognises that it's better to:

1) put a mark above mean sea level, which was done at the Isle of the Dead,

2) that the magnitude if the height above should be recorded, which it was at the Isle of the Dead, and

3) that the level should be "recorded on a plate of copper, well protected from the weather, by placing a flat stone with cement between, upon the plain surface or platform which should constitute the mark from which the level of mean tide should be measured" - which it was at the Isle of the Dead...

I will ask you for about the third or the fourth time now - why is it sensible to put a tide mark above the mean sea level, especially at a location like the Isle of the Dead?

Come on, you claim to be an old salt, you should know... Why are you struggling so much to answer this question?

I'll give you a clue - there are at least two reasons for putting a mark above mean sea level, and I'll guarantee that Lempriere, Ross, and all the others at that time were very cognisant of these reasons...

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

Bern, you are wrong about so many things so the odds are you are barking up the wrong tree here too. As I have said before there are imponderables here and there is no definite answer. Shorrt obviously got it wrong and there were shockwaves following Krakatoa. But to try to make out you can nail it down to a definite 13 cm of SLR is ridiculous. That isn't science, just more reconstructed angels based on assumption.

So stop being so obtuse and just admit that your altimetry and GRACE gravy meter are a useless source of dancing angels and start doing some spadework towards your own personal observations.

It isn't hard and the sooner you start the better so that when you are fed with an overload of BS like the ABC and the BoM are currently doing at the moment as per my links above, you will have the capacity to be sceptical.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

"At least I can support the fact that SLs have not risen on the east coast in my lifetime with fact, observation and witnesses"

No you can't. You have no data, no recognised measurements no recognised calibration...surely you understand that??

The longest duration tide records contradict you and your witnesses.

All you prove is that you are intransigent, not reachable. Isolated. Mad. Not quite all there.

That's what the real world data says indirectly about you, drongo.

Add to that the references to trivially discredited 'contrarians' and woeful right wing media, and the truly daft repetition of 'dancing angels' and 'doltoids'... you are clearly mad, Spangled.

You've lost your mind, lost your reason, lost your scepticism, lost your argument long ago. Why do you bother?

Here’s some arguably less.

Faaaaark, no "arguably less" about it, not even close!

You supplied an unsourced and unsubstantiated quote apparently from the notoriously unreliable source WUWT to "justify" your position, which it can not do - unsubstantiated (apparently) conspiratorial ideation does not persuade.

And you also supplied a link to a graph of what appears to be data for a single station (but not to the original verifiable source, to the WUWT version, and no-one knows how WUWT might have messed it up which they have done countless times before).

Worse still, that station is not located in moose country but in the faaarking south of Arizona.

And doubly worse, it shows a period of merely 10 years or so instead of several decades that would be needed to support your claim, if you even managed to get the moose habitat geography right!

What kind of rank stupidity is this?!

And then you supply a fairly vague continental US graph (again, we don't know it was produced and whether it was mightily cocked up by the gang of incompetents at WUWT or not), but even if it's accurate again it's only for the decade to 2015. It doesn't matter what trends that graph shows, because over that time period it cannot prove your point.

You know and we know and you know that we know that you (and WUWT) are reduced to cherry picking periods and stations where the noise temporarily overwhelms the signal so that you can deny the signal.

To put it another way surely even you don't believe this shit, SD. Your blatantly fallacious arguments appear to be a cry for help, not something that's meant to persuade anyone who is vaguely rational and evidence driven.

Go seek professional help!

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

Your view was bullshit when you rode in here on your seahorse months ago.

I did rather like that line. :-)

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

But it's interesting isn't it nicky that you can't produce any observed evidence to the contrary.

How do you manage to get so steamed up about the rightness of your dancing angels?

Never occurs to you that they might be wrong?

And it might be a good idea to go outside and check?

Even when you know that your dancing angels can no longer find their pin heads because their reference frame and gravy meter are out of whack?

A rational person would suggest it's your argument that is somewhat lacking in credibility.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

That's why I stopped talking to you Lothe.

You're thick. You don't even know that state-of-the-art USCRN only runs for the last decade. It's probably been homogenised too but it still shows cooling in spite of that.

That's not cherry picking, you dill, when it's the total data produced.

But what can you expect from anyone who thinks ian's lines are worth repeating.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

Just out of interest, SD, have you ever been to the south of Arizona like I have?

If so, what features or combination of features of that particular biome gave away to an expert like yourself the insight that this was prime moose habitat? Was it the predominantly brown colour scheme due to lack of ground cover and the very limited precipitation levels, the searing daytime temperatures, or the predominance of cacti such as saguaro and cholla? And am I right that you're not talking about the same moose as everyone else, but the hitherto unknown to science species that might be dubbed the Sonoran Desert Moose?

To jog your memory (seeing Elgin may be just outside of the Sonoran Desert, and perhaps you might reckon it's more hospitable to moose there) here's a view of the turnoff that takes you to the Elgin weather station you (apparently) showed a graph for. Maybe you could enlighten us all with your expert wisdom as to what clues there are that this is moose country?

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

You’re thick. You don’t even know that state-of-the-art USCRN only runs for the last decade.

Oh, FFS, you really are trying to win the dummy prize!

I knew it. You knew it. We both knew it. You even knew I knew it. This is merely your desperate attempt to distract from your complete bollocks of a claim.

The problem is that we both know that you can't use a 10 year record to show a long term trend (which I pointed out to you in the previous comment), let alone use a trend from Arizona to refute the point that there is a long term warming trend in US moose country. And we both know that you tried to do exactly that and then project your own "thickness" on to me.

Mate, even you know you're full of bullshit, SD!

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

Sorry Lothe, this is the total USCRN data for conus

And...it still doesn't support your attempt to rebut the point about the moose for the same pair of reasons the other graph did not.

And of course it still doesn't show cooling since 1900 or 1934 or 1936 like you said (my deals are still on the table, BTW. Feel free to take up any one of them. Bet you don't, and for the obvious reason.)

When are you going to own up to telling porkies about either of those things, SD?

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

That’s not cherry picking, you dill, when it’s the total data produced.

You don't know whether you're coming or going. You may not even know the definition of the words you are misusing.

You reject the long term records because you reckon they've been fraudulently modified through homogenisation, then you tout a short term record as rebutting a point about the moose ... whilst simultaneously approvingly relaying quotes that reckon that short term record is dodgy because it's been homogenised.

And to top it all off you try to tell us "that's all the data there is", when that's an obvious lie about the data relevant to the moose and data relevant to your earlier "CONUS cooling since 19xx" claims which you first tried to apply to the moose.

You literally don't care if you contradict what you wrote an hour ago, as long as your manic repetition that "it can't be true, it can't be true" keeps the disturbing voices away, right?

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

"But it’s interesting isn’t it nicky that you can’t produce any observed evidence to the contrary."

What you mean to say is there isn't any evidence that you aren't willing to ignore. You also confuse the stridency of your claim to have evidence for actual public, testable evidence. Excuse me if I don't find that interesting, your routine wore out long ago. You've seen the long term records. Your dismissal of them is without credibility.

"A rational person would suggest it’s your argument that is somewhat lacking in credibility."

You're not any kind of rational person. We show you data. You show us none.

But Lotharsson, imagine how much more realistic Breaking Bad would have been had Walter White and Jesse Pinkman settled for illegal moose trapping in the frozen wastes of Arizona/New Mexico rather than all that blue meth nonsense.

There's a moral in that for everyone, chek ;-)

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

"You do realise that Spangly is an ‘unpersuadable’", #12 - he is a climate revisionist and you are debating with a criminal. Stop paying credit to thugs.

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

Drongo, I will ask you for about the fourth or the fifth time now – why is it sensible to put a tide mark above the mean sea level, especially at a location like the Isle of the Dead?

I'll even give you a huge leg-up - why wouldn't one ever put a mark at the low-tide point? It helps to understand that the cliff is sandstone...

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

cRR, it's difficult to argue...

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

The Arizona Moose aka the drongo has retired, sleeping the sleep of the unpersuadable...

Nick, it's a shame, because I've been casting my mind back to the geomorphology of the cliff on which Lempriere's mark was carved, and there are two features which pretty much conclusively prove that it can't be a mean sea level point, quite apart from the two functional reasons to which I've been trying to steer Drongo.

I know (and agree with) a few people here who have been pointing out that trying to change Drongo's mind is an exercise in futility, but I've actually been learning things myself from the exchange. There's also another wonderful story from last Saturday about my daughter, which arose from Drongo's inability to understand signal and noise, but I'll tell that another time.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

#5 LOL, Sparkles lectures about cyclones, but doesn't know the difference between a cyclone and an east coast low. Hint: a storm isn't a cyclone because some retired meteorologist calls it one.

Oh my poor sides...!

But since Sparkles links to Harden Up, I note their website says:
"Countries across the globe, including Australia, are experiencing changes in climate that cannot be explained by natural variability. "

They also have a page (with some links) on Sea Level Rise, "Harden Up brings you four specially produced videos that were developed to help Queenslanders learn about sea level rise..." Any bets on whether Spangles watched-and-learned?

For mine, I can only watch in admiration at classic clown-trolling, masterfully echoing the immortal Sunspot's gift of linking to websites that disprove his argument. Props Spangles, transcendent stuff!

:-)

Drongo, I'd really like to know if you can think of reasons for striking a mark close to a high tide height, because I've just found another piece of evidence to support my case, and it comes from none other than John Daly...

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

Lotharsson #46

I don't get it - of course there are moose there. Some of the greatest westerns ever are set in that area, like Little Big Moose, The Moosing, and - a personal favourite - The Good, the Bad, an the Alces.

I'd list some more cervidae-themed westerns, but I'm distracted by the remembrance of the great Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye banjo duet:
She killed a moose in South Arizona
South Arizona, killed a moose it's true
And that is why they're hangin'
Hangin' Caribou!

Drongo, for giggles I should add this quote from A Comparison of Historical and Recent Sea Level Measurements at Port Arthur, Tasmania by Pugh et al...

Ross also emphasises that it would be more desirable to have the benchmark above the reach of the highest tide, and this is a practice he adopted subsequently on his voyage, for sea level measurements made at Port Louis, Falkland Islands (Pugh 2003). Von Humboldt's correspondence with the Admiralty showed that he favoured marks placed at carefully determined heights above the highest tides.

...although it's only tangential to my questions about the rationale for positioning the mark where they did. I include it simply to note that Ross himself was not inclined to follow the Govenor's directions to "have the mark cut deeply in the rock in the exact spot which his tidal observations indicated as the mean level of the ocean".

I will leave it for you to figure out why it's not useful to put a mark at mean sea level at the Isle of the Dead, and see if you are in at least some small way as nautically-savvy as you imagine yourself to be. You'll get brownie points if you can also preempt my geomorphological evidence...

Time's ticking though - if you can't tell us soon I might just going conclude that you're clueless and lay it out for you.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

“You do realise that Spangly is an ‘unpersuadable’”, #12 – he is a climate revisionist and you are debating with a criminal. Stop paying credit to thugs.

I've said that many times but it's as pointless as trying to get Spanky to change his view. All these folks have obsessive-compulsive behavior; they just can't stop, even after 30 months of Spanky lies, obfuscation, and denial.

I suspect that few of us get to interact with ego-driven, sociopathic fantasists very often, and find the depths of hole-digging and foot shooting that's engaged in to be strangely compelling, not to mention mildly entertaining.

"In your dreams" says the knowledgeable bern.

What, bern, don't you Doltoids do daily or twice daily data surveys of wilderness areas and National Parks?

Noting increases or decreases of actual numbers and/or species over long periods?

Noting tracks and scats of feral predators? Co-ordinating authorities and locals in eradication programmes?

Why am I not surprised?

If you're ever going to notice what's really happening in the real world [like factual SLR] you better make a start.

And as for your fixation on the minutiae of Port Arthur, let me just repeat that there are unknowns here but as usual you subscribe to the numpties that started with the groupthink rate of SLR and worked backwards.

That's just like the 4 collusive orgs behind the altimetry satellites. Consensual science has to hang together, eh?

Or it just might hang separately.

Since I pointed out your GRASP problem above, relying on reconstructed dancing angels doesn't hold water any more.

Talk to John and Neil about it.

And Lothe, stop waffling and procrastinating. Is the cheque in the mail yet?

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

And Lothe, stop waffling and procrastinating. Is the cheque in the mail yet?

Mate, you're the one who has been waffling your arse off and procrastinating, so it's good to see you finally taking an interest. However you getting a bit ahead of yourself. You've got to agree to take up one (or several) of the offers first. Do you want to have your lawyer arrange it with mine, or would you prefer to waive consultation with anyone prudent and sign an agreement regardless?

If so, please specify which of the deals you wish to accept.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

Yes, Lothe, I could well imagine the chances of ever getting paid by a serial denier like you.

I can see why you never made it in the real world.

It would always be Lawyers at 20 paces with any deal you did.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

I can see why you never made it in the real world.

Seeing you are talking out of your arse again on the back of almost zero information I am forced to speculate that It's always projection.

I could well imagine the chances of ever getting paid by a serial denier like you.

Which is why I offered you the legal route if you felt like it, but you stupidly rejected it with this:

It would always be Lawyers at 20 paces with any deal you did

This is not only stupid because a legal agreement would make it a lot more likely that one of us would get paid, but doubly stupid because if you have such disdain for doing it formally I offered you the informal route. You really are a past master at arguing against yourself!

So let me state again: the deals are all on the table, with or without the lawyers.

Are you gonna put your money where your mouth is, or are you just going to impotently mouth off?

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

Lothe, acknowledge exactly what facts above you accept and deny and then restate your proposition and I will look at it. Just make it clear.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

Sources for Drongo's "information":

- John Daly - sea-level kook with zero science published to his name.
- Anthony Watts - uni drop-out with no qualifications whose only stab at any "research" embarrassingly produced proof positive that his assertions about temperature are wrong.
- vague memories of a king tide 40 years ago, at a place 3km inland from the sea.

What a joke.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 30 Jun 2015 #permalink

One thing is certain:Spanky's data isn't personally observed.

"Are you gonna put your money where your mouth is, or are you just going to impotently mouth off?"

Well, it's going to be the latter, isn't it, really.

It's not like Spanky has a choice. He knows it, we know it.

Oh dear God.

Lothe, you've gone very quiet all of a sudden.

And CT and Wow with no personal observations one way or another to support or refute.

Care to put up or shut up?

But maybe BBD has?

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

I have a personal observation, Arizona Moose: you are behaving like an infant.

Fuck off and publish. After you've published your 'observations', we'll discuss them. That's all that is asked of anyone who wants to communicate in good faith.

Lothe, acknowledge exactly what facts above you accept and deny and then restate your proposition and I will look at it. Just make it clear.

I already did. And then linked to them again some time later when I repeated the offers. And linked to them again yesterday when I repeated the offers. Are you sure you're sufficiently compos mentis to be making deals, when you apparently missed all that and now can't find any of it?

Or are you merely so ludicrously incompetent at "doing data" that you decided earlier that you'd make money by agreeing to them without bothering to check the terms? (Yeah, it's always projection).

Not bothering to check the terms of the deal or figure out the desirability of it is how people fail in the real world, SD. And the only people I know who go around trying to tell other people they know nothing about they've "not succeeded in the real world" are those who've conspicuously failed themselves and have a chip on their shoulder about it (It's always projection.)

But you're not actually agreeing to the deal, are you? You're throwing out a long list of whatever flimsy excuses come to mind, even if they contradict the other excuses in the same comment, in the hope that people will forget you refuse to stand behind your own words.

So since you're asking for the accepted facts and the terms, I'll point out that I linked to them in this comment on this very page. Go and check them out and feel free to take up any or all of the four of them, but I recommend doing your due diligence first.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

While I'm at it, note this tactic:

...acknowledge exactly what facts above you accept and deny...

Careful readers will note that I neither accepted nor denied any facts in my propositions. I simply offered to pay or be paid via a method that would see SD earn a nice chunk of change from me if his claims about cooling since the year X in the data set that he selected were correct, and gave him several different options depending on which of his various claims he was willing to stand behind.

It is not necessary for me to accept or deny any claims or any data for the proposition to proceed, and nor did I, because the burden of proof is on SD.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

Good grief, I have been visiting the University of Plovdiv (Bulgaria) for a few days and I return to find of of our serial deniers linking repeatedly to a comedy site known as WUWT for his information. No primary literature; just a washed up weatherman turned climate change denier who distorts the data for dumbtards like Spangled Dumbo.

The worst thing is that he actually thinks he is somehow 'on top' of the science in the debates over SLR and moose demographics (he lost both some time ago).

As an aside, here in Holland we are expecting temperatures to top 40 C on Saturday - you read that correctly 40 friggin' C. Its totally absurd. The warmest temperature ever recorded in this normally maritime climate was 38.6 C in Arcen, Limburg, about a decade ago; but to top 40 C is crazy. I spoke with scientists in Plovdiv and they are studying all kinds of range shifts of species from the south (Turkey, Greece) into Bulgaria, some of which are serious pests. The same thing is happening here for obvious reasons; out climate has shifted from maritime to south-central continental in the space of 20 years. And the ecological effects are also becoming patently obvious as well.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

Lothe, the only hunting I am here for is SLR.

I have never claimed that Arizona is moose country even though I did post a graph on Arizona cooling which I thought was the conus graph. I quickly reposted the conus graph which showed cooling for the whole of its existence.

I did not even bother to read most of your rants on moose because their continued health has plainly nothing to do with AGW.

Now, unless you have a point to make about your observations of SLR I would prefer to ignore issues of no relevance.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

Spanky, with no personal observations one way or another to support or refute. Then whines about how everyone else has no personal observations, but the personal observations of thousands of stations to refute your bollocks.

You have been shown the records.

You have shown NOTHING to your own personal observations. Hell, you probably don't live anywhere near there.

I quickly reposted the conus graph which showed cooling for the whole of its existence.

We went over this. The CONUS "graph" (which wasn't a graph, it was a schematic with no way to determine what it was showing) only covers about 10 years which makes it completely and incompetently irrelevant to you earlier loud and confident claims that CONUS were "cooling since 1900", "cooling since 1934" or "cooling since 1936", depending on which side of the bed you woke up on any given day.

I did not even bother to read most of your rants on moose because their continued health has plainly nothing to do with AGW.

In other news, SD continues a long line of denalist tradition. Senator McDonald has refused to read the report because he knew it was biased. He couldn't say how he knew because he hadn't read it and he didn't even have a history of bias in the source to point to. And we have other examples of conservative politicians and science deniers doing exactly the same - condemning articles for bias or irrelevance when they haven't read them. In your case, you apparently know what my comments are about despite not having read them. Praise the Lord, it's a freakin' miracle of comprehension!

Except we can hold the praise. The comments you admit you didn't read that are relevant here weren't about the moose, so it's your usual "SD doesn't do data" screw up. The relevant comments were about your own straightforward claims about CONUS temperatures.

It appears so far that you are completely unwilling to stand behind those claims - which was the point of my propositions. You talk big but won't (and can't) back it up, and then you make weak excuse after contradictory excuse when called on it, and you seem to think no-one notices your intellectual cowardice.

Now, unless you have a point to make about your observations of SLR I would prefer to ignore issues of no relevance.

Ah, an implicit admission - the pre-emptive declaration that not only have you not read the comments relevant to your own claims, but any future such comments on the topic of your own claims will be declared (without reading them!) to be "irrelevant" to the topic of your own claims.

Shall we all simply agree that you chickened out when someone offered to pay you a nice wad of cash if the data you cited supported the claims you made? And that this and the abject method of chickening out indicates that you know that you're in denial, but you still have to deny to yourself and everyone else that you are?

Or will you step up and put your wallet and mine on the line?

Choose wisely.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

And I suppose you're gonna tell me as a result of that 40 friggin’ C more than half the country is under water ☺.

But cheer up, it may never happen. It also reached that same 38.6c in Warnsveld, Netherlands in 1944.

But don't feel lonely, jeffie, The ABC has been blurbing on about Qld's first possible July cyclone ever. Oh dear!

We've only had about 15 before.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

Lothe dear, I know how you must be feeling at the sudden demise of your dancing angels but really, moose were never part of it, however much you wanted to distract from the subject.

You're putting up a brave front I know, but face it, you can't dodge the real world forever.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

Yet more lack of proof from spanky.

Well, proof he's full of shit, but we weren't asking for proof of that.

And, yes, Spanky, we HAVE personally observed this evidence of you being full of crap.

Spanky has the memory of a goldfish. A dead one. That died of Alzheimers.

Moose was STUPID's claims. Standard denier shite, says he works with animal studies (rather like you, spanky), yet doesn't know what MOOSE are, and gets their identification wrong and "defends" that with a "Oh, that doesn't matter".

But now, spanky, you pretend like you were the only one on here.

Short memory span?

Not a good idea to display that when your entire screed is about your memory of decades of "sea level drop" at a place you've never been to, but "remember clearly", based on a WtfUWT old post that sounded damn fine to your brain at one point in time.

Wow, no observed evidence of SLR?

No volunteering for wildlife surveys?

Nothing but an empty bag of wind.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

"Wow, no observed evidence of SLR?"

Yes, plenty. You've refused to acknowledge it.

"No volunteering for wildlife surveys?"

Neither have you. Jeff, on the other hand, and a few others, have.

"Nothing but an empty bag of wind."

It's always projection with you muppets, isn't it?

Well, the autobiography is out, see #82 for a good read.

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

No substance though.

The source material rather precluded any other sort, so we can't fault his ghostwriter.

We’ve only had about 15 before.

Still don't know the difference between a tropical cyclone and an east coast low...Nice to see him maintain his perfect record. Tallyrand might as well been speaking of spangles: "he has learned nothing and forgotten nothing".

Wow #67

One thing is certain:Spanky’s data isn’t personally observed.

LOL, its not even data. He's given us an anecdote and nothing more. If he has actual data, he hasn't shown it yet.

True, it's only rhetorical claims of data. It doesn't exist, though, except in the fevered brain of the moron who heard on WtfUWT that in one place in the world king tides haven't gone up.

Then leapt to the conclusion handed him by tony "anything for a dollar" watts: sea levels must be dropping.

Spanky isn't even smart enough to work out he needs more than just to claim king tides measure sea levels.

But, as shown so evidently by its absence: no actual data is forthcoming from spanked.

Drongo

But maybe BBD has?

No, I'm just fed up with your stupidity and refusal to admit error. It is impossible to sustain a conversation with someone who operates outside the bounds of rational discourse.

Perhaps this is your fundamental strategy. Just keep megaphoning your insanity until all the rational commenters can take no more and wander off in disgust.

...but really, moose were never part of it...

Classic clown trolling - now rejecting a position he took a couple of hours earlier after I pointed out it was irrelevant to his claim!

He literally can't tell whether any particular point supports or undermines his position. He merely hopes that one of these days one of the myriad he runs up the flag pole will garner a salute and he can march bravely forward in a rearwards direction loudly declaring victory.

No luck so far despite thousands of attempts.

You’re putting up a brave front I know, but face it, you can’t dodge the real world forever

Says the guy who's bravely putting up a front by conspicuously dodging a real world offer to take thousands of dollars from me...

...unless of course he was lying about what the data said (and he knows it, hence his brave front trying to hide some really conspicuous cowardice).

Repeat after me folks, it's always projection.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

Chek #60 - yes, it has a compelling, car-crashy quality. Your comment reminded me of Cortez' men looking at each other in wild surmise, so - with apologies to Keats:

On First looking into Spangle's Dribble:

MUCH have I travell'd on the internet,
And many goodly sites and forums seen;
Round many science weblogs have I been
Whose hosts hold fealty to Athena yet.
Oft the lies of clowntrolls I would abide
To see them hoist on ignorance and hype:
Yet did I never read such pure tripe
Till I saw Spangle's froth about the tide:
Then felt I like some fan of the absurd
When a new auguste steps into the ring;
Or like a novice, not yet having heard
All the nonsense filched from Watts or Codling
Come newly to realise just how much merde
They need to hide their abject quivering...

My.. Keats gonna kiss you tonight FrankD :)

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

And regarding an earlier topic, chalk up another great achievement for the Cuban medical system.

"[This is] one of the greatest public health achievements possible," WHO director general, Margaret Chan, told the press. And the best part is that it was brought about by relatively simple strategies: namely, better testing and treatment of expectant parents, and providing HIV- and syphilis-positive mothers with options to protect their babies, such as bottle-feeding and C-sections.

What Cuba has done differently is integrate these treatments into accessible and affordable universal healthcare, so that they've become a normal part of treatment for all pregnant women.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

+1 FrankD!

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

@FrankD

Chapeau!

;-)

@ Frank #90

I'll stick with a traditional 'heh'.

Meantime main date record Holland (station de Bilt) was 31.7° C is now 33.0° C and could rise a little still.
#Euro Heatwave

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

And the UK July record just went.

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

Chap eau?

Isn't that french for "Man Water"?
;-)

Re:July, there's some advice going on now about what to do if you're elderly, since you can't sweat as easily and your temperature control in hot weather impaired.

A lot of deniers are of the older generation.

I wonder if they'll start worrying about AGW now?

"I wonder if they’ll start worrying about AGW now?" - they'll die worrying. Or, they may not worry. Usually old white whiskey sipping rich men who never leave the airconditioning.

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

The health of moose populations has everything to do with warming because the species is locally adapted to a very narrow range of temperatures based on our understanding of its thermoneutral zone, and the amount of metabolic effort necessary to maintain that. SD is as always speaking on a subject way out of his depth. He has not got a clue about ecophysiology and does not plainly read the primary literature, except relying on fringers who publish little, if anything in the primary journals. These clowns are not worth the time of day.

Moreover, warming enhances overwintering survival of parasites that plague moose populations. Several factors may be involved bu either directly or indirectly warming is the primary culprit.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

Wow

Chap eau?

Isn’t that french for “Man Water”?

Are you taking the piss?

;-)

Oner last point to add to my previous post: there's a huge volume of empirical evidence that goes well beyond Alces alces in detailing the effects - often very negative - of AGW on biodiversity. Pages of the leading scientific journals are filled with them. What SD and other simpletons are doing is what they have tried and failed to do with the 'hockey stick' - to focus their wrath unremittingly on but one very small facet climate change, and then try to give the impression that if they can debunk these small areas, that the rest of the evidence will collapse along with it. In a way, its a parallel strategy of Mann's "Serengeti Strategy", but instead of going after a few scientists they concentrate on only a small number of areas.

There's not a chance in hell that SD can debate with the various experts in all of these areas so he's stuck on blogs spewing out his mind-numbing ignorance. He's wrong on the moose as he would be on a wide range of taxa that are affected by AGW. This is not even worthy of debate; the scientific community has moved far onwards from the inanity of arguments like those expounded by SD. Every major ecological conference I attend not only takes AGW as a 'given',. but amongst my fellow ecologists we already know that individuals, populations, communities and ecosystems are responding. Thus to argue about moose is a no-brainer.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

Poor ol' jeffy, like silly bern, thinks that animals which have lived on this earth through climate changes far greater than present and which go through daily temp ranges probably 100 times current AGW are in danger from AGW even though it is less than average natural variability.

Does ecophysiology teach you that, jeff?

Try rationality instead, then.

And while you're in the Netherlands it's your big chance to seek out some old sea walls and talk to the locals who would lead you down the paths of righteousness regarding local SLR.

You could also let Frank and the rest of the Doltoids know seeing as they are incapable of finding out for themselves.

Silly Frank doesn't even get that we have had big numbers of powerful winter cyclones during the last 160+ years of record, many of which have originated in the tropics and caused incredible chaos to Qld and NSW but now our stupid BoM chooses to call those winter cyclones east coast lows.

When they both originate in the same place, have the same intensity and both behave the same as cyclones, they're cyclones.

How do you Doltoids manage to classify ducks?

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

Lothe, the only hunting I am here for is SLR.

Says the old fart who can't hit the side of a barn at ten paces with a shotgun.

And while you’re in the Netherlands it’s your big chance to seek out some old sea walls and talk to the locals who would lead you down the paths of righteousness regarding local SLR.

Drongo, you're what is known in technical terms as a fuckwit.

The local Dutch are well aware that the North Sea is rising up its "sea walls" (I guess that you would choke on the word "dykes"...). It's why the Dutch are extending the height of their barriers, and building floating houses, and widening the mouths of rivers prone to significant flooding. They've developed an integrated technology to provide early warning of serious events and to optimise evacuation strategies.

Try telling a Dutch person that the seas aren't rising and they'll tell you that you're an idiot. Although in your case that's already a well-understood fact.

And just to remind you:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2015/06/03/june-2015-open-thread/commen…

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2015/06/03/june-2015-open-thread/commen…

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2015/06/03/june-2015-open-thread/commen…

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

Poor ol’ jeffy, like silly bern, thinks that animals which have lived on this earth through climate changes far greater than present and which go through daily temp ranges probably 100 times current AGW are in danger from AGW even though it is less than average natural variability.

1) Many species were lost when temperature changes of this magnitude and at this rate occurred.

2) Temperature changes of the magnitude that we're causing now, starting from the very mild pre-Industrial global mean of around 14 C, will force many species above the maximum tolerable limits of their thermotolerance envelopes which, due to very basic and fundamental heat distribution physics, are not negotiable. Further, not only is physiological adaptation almost impossible for many species, there is little scope for range migrations that could sustain them once the final impacts of human-caused warming have plateaued.

3) The individual-, species-, and ecosystem-level physiologies of diurnal and even seasonal temperature range responses are profoundly different to the response at annual, decadal, centenial, and millenial scales. That you confabulate the differences is a profound indictment of your complete ignorance of anything to do with the ecophysiology of thermal envelopes.

To put it in terms that someone as stupid as you might understand, you don't have a fucking clue what you're talking about.

Does ecophysiology teach you that, jeff?

No it doesn't, because it's not true. See above, and if you really want to understand the nuts and bolts of it do a few semester courses in biochemistry, physiology, and ecology, and for extra understanding throw in some first year physics and/or some physical chemistry.

FFS, you're a crackpot Drongo.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

FWIW the Oostende, Belgium link, found by following my second link in #7 above, is truncated. Anyone interested to see what's happening to sea level beyond the southwest end of the Dutch coastline can see it here:

http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/413.php

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

And from the north of the Netherlands, which I know well:

http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/236.php

http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/24.php

http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/1037.php

So once again tell me Drongo - is sea level falling around the Netherlands?

And have you figured out yet why Lempriere wouldn't have wanted to cut the Port Arthur tide mark at mean sea level, and why it's clear that he didn't?

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

"...we have had big numbers of powerful winter cyclones during the last 160+ years of record, many of which have originated in the tropics and caused incredible chaos to Qld and NSW but now our stupid BoM chooses to call those winter cyclones east coast lows."

A statement of profound ignorance. Must have been made by the Arizona Moose. It has that signature: "I know better than research and observation"

Drongo, ECLs are mainly spawned from troughs crossing the continent, interacting with cold pools and ocean warmth. Relatively few of them are from decayed tropical cyclones either direct from the Coral Sea or 'devolved' from the Indian Ocean, and if they are and the meet the ECL classification, they are invariably 'reconditioned', re-energised and re-intensified by local conditions . Winter ECLs are rarely tropically originated.

But what the fuck would the BOM know? Why they don't defer to you ,drongo, is one of the great mysteries of modern knowledge hierarchy. here's something for you, and it contains some useful links

#9
"What do you call it when temperature variability starts to hit many new record peaks and far fewer record troughs?"
Preconditions for Data Tampering Ideation and Allegation in Susceptible Individuals

#90...late to the party, but thanks Frank!.

"Says the old fart who can’t hit the side of a barn at ten paces with a shotgun."

Care to chance your arse on that, bern baby?

When I was the youngest Aust rep in the British Empire shooting team everyone used to borrow my .303 because I never missed. They thought it had to be the rifle.

I'd dodge that if I were you.

bern conveniently forgets to mention what animals survived and successfully coped with the last few million years of wild climate swings.

Do you possibly think moose may have been among them?

You're a blatant BS artist, bern.

The fact that so many species have thrived with an enormously greater climate change in the past, both warming and cooling, today's less-than-Nat Var change is an absolute pussycat.

Just like SLR where you conveniently ignore the fact that in the Netherlands the land mass has been sinking.

Go and find out how much, bern and get back to me with your newly reconfigured tide gauges seeing as you know it all so well.

Plus your fudge factor for your darling Doltoid dancing platform.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

You wouldn't have a clue, Cragie. Or Nick:

http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/ScreenHunter_2…

And Nick, you better go and track those old winter cyclones and find out where they came from.

And at least the BoM admitted it was stupid and agreed that it wasn't the first July cyclone. They just misplaced their historical data [what little they had].

So what does that say about you?

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

No, Moose, you haven't a clue>

You think SLR calculation in the Netherlands does not account for subsidence? Why would the Dutch not follow the attribution fundamental to determining ASLR? Idiot. Enough of your WUWT infantile whataboutery...try and behave like an adult.

And you made the contention about ECLs and their origin. Back it with data, linked. Idiot.

You don't make the rules, you arrogant fuckwit. Make a claim, back it! Make sure it's not to WUWT or the professional liars at GWPF.

"Why would the Dutch not follow the attribution fundamental to determining ASLR?"

And handwaving Nickwit then proceeds to provide no evidence.

"You don’t make the rules, you arrogant fuckwit. Make a claim, back it!"

What a twerp.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

Hilariously, Spangled Drongo gives us:
bern conveniently forgets to mention what animals survived and successfully coped with the last few million years of wild climate swings.

Do you possibly think moose may have been among them?

Why don't you tell *us*, Drongo,
- is the moose (alces alces) among those species that have survived "the last few million years"?

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

Drongo displays all the characteristics of the Creationist: a deep failure to comprehend the nature of change, and the timescales over which it occurs.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

For bonus points, Drongo, why don't you tell us how well the following various species of Moose "survived and coped" the last few million years:
Libralces gallicus - French Moose
Cervalces carnutorum
Cervalces scotti - Stag Moose
Cervalces latifrons - Broad-Fronted Moose
Alces Latifrons - Giant Moose

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 01 Jul 2015 #permalink

Interesting that Spagled Drongo doesn't need to do any wildlife survey to know that the moose "are doing fine".

What's interesting about it is that if you believe the people who *have* done wildlife surveys on moose, you would have to conclude that Spangled Drongo is trying to mooseshit us...?

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

Look at SD now, hollow boasting about his skills with a rifle. What a quack this guy is! He belongs in some sort of well guarded asylum with no access to a computer.

Then attempting to lecture me, of all people, about evolutionary time scales based on abiotic stressors; he clearly does not understand the importance of scale, as Craig has pointed out, or of the continuum between a deterministic and a stochastic process; he hasn't any idea how AGW is placed on this continuum, nor how it is exacerbated by other anthropogenic processes in what is now clearly the Anthropocene. I am having this dork for lunch and he clearly just not compute.

This is the basal level of his intellectuality here folks: he's a D-K wannabe who thinks he's up on the science he's barely read and never studied. I am a busy guy in my day job and under normal circumstances I would readily demolish each and every point our egotistical misnomer (SD) raises regarding the ecophsyiological effects of AGW, but to tell the truth, his arguments are so utterly puerile that I will let them fall on their own.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

moose “are doing fine”.

Don't verbal me cragie, you liar.

This is what I said: "bern conveniently forgets to mention what animals survived and successfully coped with the last few million years of wild climate swings."
"Do you possibly think moose may have been among them?"

When you have to verbal people to make your pathetic, incorrect point, it shows how desperate you are.

And silly jiffy doesn't get that when even sillier bern infers that I'm not a straight shooter that I have a right to reject his crap. That's not boasting, jiffy, that's just correcting the delusion your silly mate's labouring under.

"Then attempting to lecture me, of all people"

And what a hubristic fool you really are, jiffy. You great fount of ecophysiological wisdom, you.

Come on, jiffy, let your head go and demolish me. I just gotta hear this.

You arrogant, evidence-free peanut.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

FFS Drongo, give it a rest.

Your odyssey of self-destruction has run its course. No credibility remains to be demolished.

"Come on, jiffy, let your head go and demolish me. I just gotta hear this"

I already have you butt-headed dimwit. I've cited published articles, and if you like, I'll cite tons more. They prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that (a) its warming, (b) its warming at a rate beyond the means of many populations, species and species-interactions to cope, and (c) this is having deleterious effects on food webs and interaction networks that, at higher scales, will reduce the ability of complex adaptive systems to function.

Every major itnernational conference with climate change and/or ecology examiens all of these areas in detail. None of it is taken as controversial; its accepted. Get over it, you moron. Take BBDs advice. The reason I say me of all people is because in this field you are a veritable minnow who knows jack-shit about ecology. I just so happen to have a PhD in it, have published over 150 articles in the scientific literature on it and related areas, and I give many lectures on it at universities and conferences. You don't stand a chance with your bottom-scraping ignorance.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

No news from Holland, it's the 'Pause' again, meaning temps only reach record values. Like the hottest night in Dutch history.

"...wild climate swings." - what's this troll talking about? He's looking at a climatological detonation and doesn't know it.

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

"FFS, you’re a crackpot Drongo."

Bingo

"And handwaving Nickwit then proceeds to provide no evidence."

Irony meters around the globe shatter in unison. You self-oblivious dimwit, you're hopeless! "What a hubristic fool you are",Arizona Moose.

I really thought that the lack of a reference would suit you fine, in fact would make you comfortable, since you never provide credible references yourself [no, links to watts or some loony right rag do not cut it]

Go away, you're the most inept troll the agency could send.

[Frustratingly the long response I typed earlier was lost, so Drongo escapes with just the abstract version.]

Care to chance your arse on that, bern baby?

When I was the youngest Aust rep in the British Empire shooting team everyone used to borrow my .303 because I never missed. They thought it had to be the rifle.

Drongo, it seems to have escaped your comprehension that my comment was a reference to your inability to understand the science of sea level rise. Instead you pull out your wrinkled old willy to show us how well you can pee.

Pull your pants up you silly twit.

bern conveniently forgets to mention what animals survived and successfully coped with the last few million years of wild climate swings.

No, I don’t forget to mention the species that have survived to date - they're the species about which we're concerned now. And their survival hasn’t always been “successful” – many went through bottlenecks that have made them more vulnerable to further change.

But the issue here is that previous, natural changes in global climate started from 1) a lower temperature baseline, 2) happened at a much slower rate, and 3) didn’t result in as much of an increase in the mean as humans could set in train in the worst case scenario. Even if the worst case isn’t realised though, and warming is held to 2-3 C, that is still a severe assault for many species and ecosystems, to the point that they will be driven to extinction because of the fact of point 1.

This includes a lot of species in the higher, iconic taxa, and their demise will not necessarily be because of their own ecophysiological constraints but a result in changes to their habitat, their predator/disease burdens, or human response to climate chang and their subsequent attempts to survive themselves.

Do you possibly think moose may have been among them?

One species of moose (elk in Europe) – and caribou – survived climate change that went from a glacial maximum to a Holocene climate optimum because their thermal tolerance envelopes were not significantly challenged. The current warming event is not comparable because, as I have explained in the previous paragraph and countless times before here and elsewhere, the baseline for this event is much closer to their ecophysiological ceilings and there is very little wiggle room left.

To put it simply, a mean global temperature of 17-20 C is above the threshold to which much of the planet’s biosphere is currently adapted. Many species simply have no bioclimatic capacity to survive in a world appreciably warmer than today: this is truth, this is fact, this is incontrovertible science.

The fact that so many species have thrived with an enormously greater climate change in the past, both warming and cooling, today’s less-than-Nat Var change is an absolute pussycat.

Paleoclimate changes are NOT comparable in many ways to the current human-caused change, for the reasons described in points 1-3 above. Nevertheless there have been 5 previous great extinction events recognised that are largely consequences of climate change, so your blithely cavalier dismissal of their effects is just a pile of stinking manure.

The fact is Drongo that we've already warmed the planet to the peak of any of the Pliestocene interglacials. If we keep on with business as usual for another decade or so we'll be committed to a plateau that will rival the Miocene maxima, and business as usual to the end of the century and thence to plateau will warm the planet to temperatures that only existed when no mammals had evolved and in which most currently extant mammalian species simply cannot survive. If you're having trouble grokking this (don't worry, that's a rhetorical assumption) consider an update I did of a well-known graph:

http://postimg.org/image/m88n2gks9/

and crack open a few references on paleo-extinction.

Just like SLR where you conveniently ignore the fact that in the Netherlands the land mass has been sinking.

Go and find out how much, bern and get back to me with your newly reconfigured tide gauges seeing as you know it all so well.

What, can't do your own checks? Quelle surprise.

Leendert P. Louwe Kooijmans reports an isostatic-epirogenetic subsidence for the Netherlands region of 2-4 cm/century. The gauge data around the Dutch coast report increases of ~1-2.5 mm/yr, averaged since the mid 1860s. This translates to at least 10 cm rise per century, through to 25 cm rise per century, depending on location. Even assuming that the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level data is not compensated for isostatic movement, and I doubt that the raw data is, sea level rise in the Netherlands region is at least 2.5-13 times greater than subsidence. And it will actually be greater than this, because currently relative sea level rise is accelerating compared to the period contemporaneous with the initiation of the oldest Dutch tide records:

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v5/n6/full/nclimate2635.html

Drongo, what you're saying is that every competent scientist in the world, every politician who is not a screaming religious nutcase or an industry puppet, every military command, every sensible industry executive, and every phenological, cryological, oceanographic indicator of warming is wrong and that you, a clapped-out, uneducated, ideologically-motivated barnacle scraper and resin-sniffer knows better.

Wrong. Wronger than wrong.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

Jiffy luv, you shouldn't get so hot under the collar when the max temp there was at least 2c below what it was in 1944.

And if your recent, wide of the mark comments are any guide then you not only have failed to demolish anything but you also obtained your PhD from a very generous professor. You may cut it in theory [I even doubt that-- pal review would be your forte] but in practice you would be out of your depth.

Yes, Kampen, when wildlife live through this sort of climate what we have now is a pussycat. Particularly when it's even less than Nat Var.

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Vostok%20and%20Gisp%20Ice%20Core%20…

And Nickwit, being the hypocrite that he is, comes up with:

"I really thought that the lack of a reference would suit you fine"

But feel free to redeem yourself with evidence any time you like. Particularly WRT personally observed SLR.

Embarrassing about those Qld winter cyclones, eh? Never mind, just wash the sheets and go back to bed.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

"Yes, Kampen, when wildlife live through this sort of climate what we have now is a pussycat. Particularly when it’s even less than Nat Var."

I never could tell advertising and word salad apart.

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

According to wiki shooting only became a part of the commonwealth games in 1966, so SD couldn't have been that young. What medal did you get with your amazing shooting?

By turboblocke (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

It's in the same cupboard he keeps his "records" of sea level he's personally observed.

It's the same one that leads to Narnia.

bern, putting aside your gratuitous ecobabble hogwash that completely ignores the fact that warm blooded animals including humans can, will and do live in areas with enormous temperature range quite happily and yet you bed-wet over a raw data ACO2-caused temperature change of ~ 0.3c.

And what I claim WRT SLR is that on the east coast of Australia, in a tectonically stable part of the world that for the last 70 years there has been no observable SLR. And I have yet to find anyone who has personally observed any.

How accurate the correction factors on European land rise and/or fall would be is anyone's guess but if they are done by satellite they would be questionable.

Not far away across the North Sea there has been nothing happening WRT SLR for 2000 years:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1066712/Uncovered-lost-b…

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

Thanks Bernard for saying pretty much exactly what I would if I had the time. But a brainless obnoxious twerp like SD is not really worth it in my view; he's making stuff up off the top of his pin-sized head, f'rinstance when he argues - without any substantiation whatsoever - that 'wildlife' (what a useless term to describe biodiversity and at more relevant levels populations) has lived through the sort of climate we have now. That flippant comment alone deserves a wrecking ball.

Where to begin demolishing this gobbledegook? First, its not the ambient climate that affects adaptation but the historical climate within the context of a species adapted thermal maxima and minima. Moreover, its the rate of a shift beyond these extremes that determine how successfully a species will adaptively respond. Using Dumbo's analogy, 'wildlife' survived in periods - such as the late Cretaceous - when it was much warmer than today, but that is not the point. To reiterate, the point is under what conditions contemporary biodiversity evolved under and is therefore adapted to. And many regions are experiencing warming that goes well beyond the thermal limits for many invertebrates and vertebrates.

A second point is that the planet is very different now than it was during past warming episodes. Humans have reduced probably as much as 50% of the planet's genetic diversity, meaning that there are less genotypes present that might adaptively respond to certain abiotic stressors. On top of that, humans have also greatly altered the planet's surface, through creating urban and agricultural expanses, making it much for difficult for organisms to track a warming climate by dispersing polewards or to higher elevations. The empirical literature is showing many highly variable responses of species to warming. There will be winners and losers; ecologist Daniel Janzen once said that the most insidious form of extinction is the extinction of species interactions. Therein lies the rub; species do not exist in isolation; they interact in a wide array of ways with other species through direct and indirect interaction networks. Warming threatens to unravel these webs (it already is) making systems much less resilient and precipitating conditions for them to collapse. Peter Raven said that every species of tropical tree that becomes extinct condemns dozens or even hundreds of species intimately associated with that tree to extinction as well - mutualists as well as antagonists. Warming will without a doubt exacerbate the current mass extinction event.

So there you go. Demolishing Drongo is a piece of cake. The fact that he invokes the term 'wildlife' to describe biodiversity should be a ringing clue that he's way, way out of his depth. Its a shame he's so utterly stupid, but in my experience AGW deniers are a pretty thick bunch.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

Turbo, I said the British EMPIRE shooting comp.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

Nick pretty much nailed it, but why not pile on...

Spangles #3

When they both originate in the same place, have the same intensity and both behave the same as cyclones, they’re cyclones.

But they don't behave the same way, Bozo. Their origin and development are totally different. That's the whole point. Did someone slip some hallucinogens in with your meds? BOM stated Raquel was the first tropical cyclone to develop in July in that area (and only the second in the whole Oz region). They are right, and you are wrong. Simples.

If you think a tropical cyclone could form as far south as Fraser Island in winter (as per your Harden Up list), you're even nuttier than the threadbomber who keeps spamming us with that crap about his crayon mark in some canal wall and his anecdote about a lighthouse that has been moved...that, or you're a time-traveller from the 22nd Century, when such formation might be possible, the way we are going.

Prediction: Rather than avail himself of a learning opportunity, Spangles will double down on his ignorance and continue to claim BOM were talking about something other than tropical cyclones. Buffoon.

grrr, tag fail. But you get it...

For instance, place my comments in the context of SDs comedic response to Bernard above (# 37). Spangled Dumbo seems to think that adaptation to thermal variability is independent of other requirements for its reproduction and survival. He mentions vertebrates, but then we have to wonder why so many vertebrates have relatively small geographical distributions. Why aren't they everywhere? Why aren't snowshoe hares found in Florida or Eastern Woodrats found in the Arctic? Now this ain't rocket science, folks but for an intellectually challenged idiot like Dumbo, it certainly is.

The main point again is that species do not exist in isolation. Their geographical distributions at large scales as well as locally, and their actual niches at small scales are determined by a dizzying array of abiotic and biotic factors. Realized and fundamental niches may differ by many times in size. Different species within interaction networks are responding differently to warming (as well as other attendant processes such as the incidence of heat waves, droughts, heavy short-term precipitation, wind etc). This is simplifying food webs for sure. And the warming is occurring at rates normally seen over millennia, not in 50 or less years. And once again, it is occurring against a background of already reduced genetic variability and landscapes already altered greatly by Homo sapiens.

The final nail in SD's self-construcgted coffin is that none of this is considered as being controversial amongst the vast majority of scientists. Its all there in piles of empirical studies which Dumbo does not read or understand. Instead, he constantly makes things up. He's master of the art of doing this. And he expects us to swallow his crap.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

"Humans have reduced probably as much as 50% of the planet’s genetic diversity"

Well waddya ya know? After crapping on with more gratuitous ecobable jiffy finally stumbles onto the bleedin' obvious.

What are you going to do about it?

And while the population is no doubt harmful to your "biodiversity" [at least "wildlife" doesn't include humans whereas "biodiversity" does] where's your evidence that any of that 0.3c warming plus 400ppm CO2 is harmful?

The only thing you have demolished is your own credibility.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

Poor silly Frank didn't even check where half those winter cyclones originated.

They were in the tropics, Dumbo.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

Read the literature you idiot and stop making things up. You write as if the field of climate change and its effects on species and communities has just started. I know you are an imbecile, but I really find it hard to stoop to the level of someone who is staring a debate on a completely blank slate.

And that's where SD is starting. Its like teaching him to read and write. He knows NOTHING. ZILCH. ZERO. His entire 'argument' hinges on his own inherent belief system. He just doesn't read the literature. None of it. There's piles of papers (just go to Google Scholar and you'll get page after page) but Dumbo doesn't do that.

And then he says that my credibility is demolished. Can he get more hilariously ironic? The data are there in piles and the scientific community by-and-large agrees with everything I have written. And we have one pompous illiterate ass here who says it ain't so.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

"Read the literature you idiot and stop making things up. "

The first is impossible for him for intellectual reasons. The latter impossible for ideological reasons.

When you have to verbal people to make your pathetic, incorrect point, it shows how desperate you are.

If only SD applied that to his own output, including his gross verballing of the data.

What, can’t do your own checks? Quelle surprise.

Remember, he doesn't do data - which is why he's so fond of loudly pretending that other people don't.

And if your recent, wide of the mark comments are any guide then you not only have failed to demolish anything but you also obtained your PhD from a very generous professor

Here in the real world, some are pondering just how close SD is to committing an actionable libel. On the other hand, some are also suggesting that he has a strong defence by way of insanity.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

And here in the real world, I note that SD has conspicuously failed to take thousands of dollars that I'm offering if his very simple claims about a very straightforward data set are accurate - and has now pre-emptively declared that he will treat comments on the topic of his own claims as not being on the topic of his own claims.

It's a reasonable inference that he knows he's lying in those claims. And if he's willing to lie about that and ignore on-topic responses, then he's willing to lie about practically anything and everything and ignore on-topic responses.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

bern, putting aside your gratuitous ecobabble hogwash that completely ignores the fact that warm blooded animals including humans can, will and do live in areas with enormous temperature range quite happily and yet you bed-wet over a raw data ACO2-caused temperature change of ~ 0.3c.

You don't read do you? There's a very different physiological response to diurnal variation than to long-term means. Go learn some first year biology, chemistry and physics before you try to make generalisations that completely miss the mark.

Idiot.

And what I claim WRT SLR is that on the east coast of Australia, in a tectonically stable part of the world that for the last 70 years there has been no observable SLR. And I have yet to find anyone who has personally observed any.

But Drongo, you've been telling us that sea level dropped 30 cm in southeast Queensland over 40 years. If not sea level rise then it must be mountain-shaking isostatic change, which is at odds with your admission of tectonic stability. And I've told you about shifting baselines - how do you think a person would "personally" perceive sea level rise?

Tell me, are you ever going to actually address any of the hundreds of substantive points that have been put to you since, what is it, 2011? 2012?

You're too stupid to be a troll, which only makes your years worth of stupidity in the internet even more sad. It would be intersting though to see if you have even a rat's capacity for learning, so can you do that Drongo? Can you be more clever than a rat?

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

Nation-wide July record Holland died twenty minutes ago. Its age was already nine years.
Now attacking the absolute record.

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

Drongo, remind us again, do you have a postgrad qualification? An undergrad degree? A Higher School Certificate? Or have you worked in scientific research? What's your history in analysis? If I gave you a dataset could you tell us the best statistical analysis to identify the information inherent?

Scraping barnacles and polishing the cleats doesn't really count as relevant experience, even if they're really big barnacles and very shiny cleats.

What's the evidence that you have any competency at all to comment? All I see is a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

But barnacles are shrimp!

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

Drongo insists, after three years without breathing: " And what I claim WRT SLR is that on the east coast of Australia, in a tectonically stable part of the world that for the last 70 years there has been no observable SLR"

One minor problem, drongo: What you claim is simply not based in reality. SLR has been observed, and it has been recorded, and it has been attributed with considerable care.

Your claim is trivially wrong. Your error was quickly identified: mistakenly thinking that one king tide had some bearing on the process of sea level rise detection.

Do not repeat it. Your views have been made clear. They are wrong, false, disproven, busted, and after all this time worthless, unenlightening, boring, only diagnostic of an addled mind.

Spangles will double down on his ignorance

Well drape me in entrails and call me Mystic Meg. Okay, it wasn't that amazing a prediction I suppose, about on a par with "the sun will rise tomorrow..."

As I remarked the other day, you peel back a layer of stupid, and you just get a deeper layer of stupid underneath. Clearly Spangles now thinks a "tropical cyclone" is any cyclone that originates in the tropics...another fail for the super sniper.

Still at least he's now conceded that half of his cyclones are not like Raquel, contrary to his original assertion. Little steps, I suppose...

Perhaps he can show us which of the other seven he's holding out on showed true tropical cyclone characteristics. You know, using real world data. I don't even mind if he didn't personally observe it. But that's not where the smart money is....

NL country-wide July record from 37.1° C (19th July 2006) to 38.2° C today, after the hottest night 'ever'.
This is also the third highest temp in the entire (year round) record.

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

Of course, the fact that several people personally witnessed those temperatures won't cut the mustard for spanky. After all, they aren't a sharpshooter first class (or "Year One in USian terms).

"The arguments ... can only be made through stridency as there is no substance to them".

"the ... contingent/army/fanbase is largely provincial and largely elderly"

"Relativity and QM are way too hard to understand by that assembly of right-wing idiots. They just can't understand a word of them, mostly because their brains are adapted only to see truth in their day to day experience (another reason they can't accept global warming)."

"This fucking hippo is more than welcome to wallow in his own ignorance."

A selection of comments from today's Guardian regarding another idiot braggart's (Glenn Beck's) call to boycott the upcoming Disney movie about Darwin. A certain amount of overlapping congruency readily applicable to a certain poster here ISTM.

The british empire games were replaced by the empire and commonwealth games in 1950. However shooting was not one of the sports.

By turboblocke (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

SD at #35. The Roman beach was found six feet below the surface... but didn't we go through this with you already last year?

By turboblocke (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

SD at #35. The Roman beach was found six feet below the surface… but didn’t we go through this with you already last year?

We did. Siltation.

.303 in competition target rifle?

Hmmm

SD

Poor ol’ jeffy, like silly bern, thinks that animals which have lived on this earth through climate changes far greater than present and which go through daily temp ranges probably 100 times current AGW are in danger from AGW even though it is less than average natural variability.

You stupid, stupid ignoramus who is clueless about the phenological disruption caused by warming on species that use other cues to set about reproduction and even the migration required to achieve that.

Movement of species can be limited by altitude and other more obvious physical barriers.

Hell, even as far back as this book: 'Climate Change and Biodiversity' by Thomas E. Lovejoy, Lee Jay Hannah which has many learned contributors covering a wide field of knowledge.

I urge you to study this, or similar, before continuing to behave in such a loutish manner which is unseemly for one of your years.

SD

used to borrow my .303 because I never missed. They thought it had to be the rifle.

It was, an reasonable shot can do amazing things with a .303 with correctly adjusted sights. I wonder if you could get 15+ aimed rounds off in one minute. That was our goal, which many achieved, with the BEF as exemplars.

SD

You clearly have skipped over my post two pages back now stop being a lazy prat and get up to speed on the topic of how humans have fracked environments with more than just AGW!

Stop being such an ol' tosser!

Nice try, Lionel.

But trying to persuade someone who's fully invested in the Watts/Codling fantasy that scientists working in institutions like BoM are script-following, pal-reviewing morons (despite documented evidence that's the denier way) is an exercise in futility.
Remember, Spanky's never had personal 'obs' of a Higgs-Boson particle, so our universe doesn't exist. Neither has he had personal 'obs' of electrons, so fuck knows how you're reading this either.

Nor does SD have personal observations of any of us, only the proxy of commentary supposedly generated by us, so presumably we do not exist either.

Poor ol' Doltoids, no ideas, no evidence, no observations.

But there's no time like the present for adjusting the past to fake the future, hey?

But go easy on the angels, particularly those large breast implants.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

no evidence, no observations.

Why do you persist in being such a pathologically stupid and obvious liar, Spanky?

IPCC AR5 Report

So, anyone got an idea what spanky is going on about? Or is it complete mental breakdown for the old fart?

I think, Russell, because they aren't interested in informing, just in pushing a false narrative.

But that's just my take on it.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

It isn't difficult to produce wine from grapes at UK latitudes. The difficulty is making decent stuff. So when people say that the Romans produced some wine in the UK it doesn't impress me. Because of the different growing season it was probably rather more acidic than we are accustomed to.

By turboblocke (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

BBD, Field Marshall Lord Roberts, started the British Empire shooting comp and those old Martini-Henry .303s were the original rifles. We moved on to WW2 303s later.

Dumchek quotes the IPCC as the go-to for climate facts. Oh dear!

Have you cheked their mad models lately?

You know, the ones that are 99% wrong but they are now at 95% confidence level with?

Like the link I showed you above?

Is that the IPCC you mean, Dumchek?

With the big breasted dancing angels?

But at least the IPCC counters your lies and acknowledges the pause and the mediaeval warm period.

And do the Doltoids possibly acknowledge that the incredible GM development of grapes since RWP might have something to do with their capacity to grow in colder climates and higher latitudes today?

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

And poor silly lionel wonders why I ignore him when he ejaculates crap like "people aren't good shots, guns are".

Like he believes in future projections of disaster based on fabricated crap on CAGW.

He doesn't get that species that have survived all those past catastrophes over millions of years might just be able to handle the tiny amount of CC that is yet to equal natural variability.

What they may not be able to cope with it the overpopulation of the planet with Doltoids of such similar thought capacity.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

And do the Doltoids possibly acknowledge that the incredible GM development of grapes since RWP might have something to do with their capacity to grow in colder climates and higher latitudes today?

So you really are crackers.

You've taken a personal non-verified, non-standardised historical anecdote and from it spun a tale of infinite regression that results in the world's scientific establishment, the world's very conservative military leaders and analysts, the world's even more conservative insurance agencies and other businesses, the world's animal and plant species, the world's ice caps and glaciers and oceans and continents... all conspiring to deceive you and your psychopathically Dunningly-Krugered libertarian mates and lure you from your bunkers to be forever shackled in a One World communist slave camp.

Parsimony isn't your thing, is it?

Drongo, if you have family can you please ask them to read this thread. They need to know that you are non compos mentis, and take appropriate action.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

And Drongo, get over your puerile fixation on the female anatomy. It's not a good look, especially in someone of your age.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

"And do the Doltoids possibly acknowledge that the incredible GM development of grapes since RWP might have something to do with their capacity to grow in colder climates and higher latitudes today?"

Feel free to substantiate that 'possible...might...something to do.." claim, lay out your references, SD. How 'incredible' has 'GM development of grapes' really been? Then send it to Mark Steyn, he needs a hand badly. Any bullshit you produce [and it will be half-assed twaddle] will be better than Steyn's own efforts.

So, anyone got an idea what spanky is going on about?

Well, he does remind me more and more of Tim "Seawater" Curtin (R.I.P.), but without the analytical competence... ;-)

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

...all conspiring to deceive you and your psychopathically Dunningly-Krugered libertarian mates and lure you from your bunkers to be forever shackled in a One World communist slave camp.

Don't forget they also want to steal his precious bodily fluids!

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

...do the Doltoids possibly acknowledge that the incredible GM development of grapes since RWP...

But SD, not a damn one of us has any personal 'obs' of GM development (let alone back to the RWP), so by your rules it didn't happen anywhere in the world.

Q.E.D.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

He doesn’t get that species that have survived all those past catastrophes over millions of years might just be able to handle the tiny amount of CC that is yet to equal natural variability.

Many - most - didn't. Most species alive today have never experienced global warming of 3-6 C over a few centuries, and none alive today have ever experienced a warming over 200-300 years from ~14.5 C mean global temperature to a mean approaching ~20 C. That's the point that you keep avoiding. Well, one of the points - you've never refuted a single one of the hundreds that have been put to you.

If you think that species and ecosystems can adapt to warming from ~14.5 C to 20 C, explain how the heat physiology works and how the ecological shifts will occur.

Fact: you can't.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

For example....the moose, which the Drongo seems to think have survived a few of million years.

They haven't, of course.

The moose (alces alces) as a species is about as old as the polar bear - maybe a hundred thousand years.

But during the last 2 million years, around 5 member-species of the same genus as our Moose have all gone extinct.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

Although to be fair - it is possible that it wasn't climate changes over the Pleistocene that caused these extinctions - it may have been gravity changes - after all, Pleistocene animals must have gone all mega- as a result of the well-known "Pleistocene Low-Gravity Period", a Period for which there is roughly the same amount of evidence as there is for a "Roman Warm Period".

Incidentally, if Spangly would like to pick up a copy of Tacitus, he will discover that the Tiber was in the habit of freezing-over during his "Roman Warm Period".

Perhaps Spangly can juxtopose these personal 'obs' on the part of Tacitus with any personal obs anybody living in Rome today may be able to provide us with concerning whether the Tiber has frozen over at all within living memory, and let us know whether this would indicate today is *cooler* or *warmer* than it was during his "Roman Warm Period", a "Period" of which he has no doubt become aware as a result of reading crank-blogs.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

Here are some 'obs' by a write for the "Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of New York":

"The Roman poets and historians speak of the frozen Tiber, of the Apennine snows, ... it has not been known for a century that the Tiber has been frozen....Tacitus tells us that the legions under Germanicus crossed the Danube on the ice... Now a sheet of ice is never seen on that part of the Danube... Julius Caesar...tells us, that Gaul was so cold that it could not make wine, or produce the vine..."

Interestingly, on the subject of Moose - the same passage makes the point that, "The climate modifies disease".
Shocking!
"The climate modifies disease"

Let us recall those in the last few days who were telling us that,
"The Moose isn't in trouble because of the climate, it is in trouble because of disease".
I wonder if those people possess the intellectual ability to realise their mistaken logic?

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

“Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of New York”, 1814, to be precise.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

bern, what an absolutely ignorant flea-brain you are.

Why don't you just google "cold hardy grapes" or one of the millions of sites available to educate yourself on.

And as the fundamental denier of Occam"s Razor that you are, you have the gall to lecture me on parsimony.

If you insist on being a hypocrite at least be original.

And you deny that our current wildlife didn't experience exponentially greater proportional warming a few millennia back with the beginning of the Holocene?

Are you really that stupid?

And can you really be this stupid:

"Many – most – didn’t. Most species alive today have never experienced global warming of 3-6 C over a few centuries"

And while they are only experiencing less than 1c warming for the last 350 years, just a few millennia back they experienced at least ten times the current warming over that period.

And survived.

Not to mention that earlier warm periods in the Holocene awa previous interglacials were also warmer than today.

And here's the temperature increase in the last 350 years as close as you are going to get without your big breasted angels. Less than 1c from the coldest period of the holocene:

http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a7c87805970b-pi

And please note how it correlates so well with CO2 [koff].

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

Spangled goes from the ridiculous tot he sublime:
trying to correlate global CO2 *emissions* (relevance to anything?) with the temperature in a very small regional area called Central England.

What a doofus.

Global CO2 *presence* in the atmosphere is what is relevant, not emissions.

And note the word *global*, you complete nitwit.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

Yes, cragie, Hannibal put ice skates on his elephants to get them over the alps.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

What Spangly appears to be too stupid to understand is this:
The current temperature change is sharper than any previous change detected using any method ever devised: the current *change* is *unprecedentedly* rapid.
The current temperature is further from the mean for the last 10,000 years than any other variation during that time.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Holocene_Temperatur…

Just remember, Spangly, the "Mediaeval Warm Period" is a stupid, incoherent myth put out by PR-merchants looking to sucker the gullible.
The "Roman Wamr Period" is an even more ridiculously non-historical and anti-factual myth from teh same kind of people who used to accept money to pose as experts on lung cancer to deny that tobacco causes cancer.

You would have to be unfathomably stupid to believe either of these ludicrous myths.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

cragie, show me a better temperature indicator for that period than CET.

Oh, you must mean the Hokey Stik!! Silly me.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

Oops, the Spangled moron puts a .303 round squarely through its foot, once again:

"Hannibal's army numbered ... 38 elephants, almost all of which would not survive the harsh conditions of the Alps".

See? They forgot their ice skates.
I think they managed to get 3 of their elephants to survive the Alps crossing.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

The Hockey-stick has been replicated and confirmed as correct by over two-dozen more recent bits of research.

Meanwhile, the fuckwits who were in such a tizz about the hockey-stick have yet to scientifically publish any research that contradicts it. Not one.

"A 2010 opinion piece by David Frank, Jan Esper, Eduardo Zorita and Rob Wilson (Frank et al. 2010) noted that by then over two dozen large-scale climate reconstructions had been published, showing a broad consensus that there had been exceptional 20th century warming after earlier climatic phases, notably the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age. There were still issues of large-scale natural variability to be resolved, especially for the lowest frequency variations, and they called for further research to improve expert assessment of proxies and to develop reconstruction methods explicitly allowing for structural uncertainties in the process.[13]

New studies using different methods continued to extend the period covered by reconstructions. Ljungqvist's 2,000 year extratropical Northern Hemisphere reconstruction generally agreed well with Mann et al. 2008, though it used different methods and covered a different area.[212] Studies by Christiansen and Ljungqvist investigated previous underestimation of low-frequency variability, and reaffirmed Mann et al.'s conclusions about the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period.[213] as did Ljungqvist et al. 2012 which used a larger network of proxies than previous studies. Marcott et al. 2013 used seafloor and lake bed sediment proxies to reconstruct global temperatures over the past 11,300 years, the last 1,000 years of which confirmed the original MBH99 hockey stick graph.[214]"

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

Is the Spangled idiot *seriously* trying to extrapolate global temperatures from the CET record?

*seriously*

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

Still waiting for Craigie's GAT for the last 350 years.

Cat got your evidence again Craigie.

What about those big bosomed Doltoid specials?

Other than the HS, of course. Even your mates at the IPCC have stopped swallowing that crap.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

Are you really that stupid?

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

After all, I'm still waiting for you to take thousands of dollars off me rather than the other way around, because you obviously weren't so stupid as to cite a data set that shows the opposite of what you claimed it was, eh, and I was obviously so stupid to offer you several deals that you would do very nicely out of in that case, eh?

Remember folks, it's always projection.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

Is the Spangled idiot *seriously* trying to extrapolate global temperatures from the CET record?

Apparently so.

Remember, he don't do data, or rather he has almost zero data quality standards - so a tiny patch of the Earth will be just as good as a global reconstruction provided it tells him what he wants to hear. Just like his own anecdotes about a tiny patch or two of Aussie coastline will do handily as evidence of the lack of global SLR because that's what he wants to hear.

Anyone notice a pattern yet?

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 02 Jul 2015 #permalink

Why don’t you just google “cold hardy grapes” or one of the millions of sites available to educate yourself on.

I don't need to - I grow them. And I know that they're not genetically modified in the "GM" engineering sense; they're selected in the old-fashioned domestic selection way.

Try harder you noisomely exudating colostomy bag.

The rest of your post is drivel that's not even worth reading, let alone responding to. But it reminds me that you still haven't been able to explain why Lempriere wouldn't put a tide mark at mean sea level on the Isle of the Dead. Is this taxing your neurone too much? Can you for once in your life make a case that is analytical rather than just vacuous faff harvested from one of your denialist buddy's fevered imaginations?

I used to think that Drongo's nonsense was a consequence of profound congenital stupidity exacerbated by ignorance stemming from a lack of education and inculcated rabis right-wing ideology. It's obvious though that someone who's as genuinely stupid as Drongo appears to be simply would not survive the four years or so that he's been posting his guff - Darwinian selection would triumphantly prevail without the intervention of a team of carers following him around everywhere to keep him alive and safe - so I can only conclude that Drongo os just an extremely septic troll with no capacity for listening to anything other than his twisted perception of the world, and that he's deriving his satisfaction from the attention he gets online.

The latter seems to be reflected in his growing fixation with female sexual body parts - obviously Drongo's arousal state is responding to his garnering of attention.

Anyway, I'm bored. The fact is that intelligent people know that Drongo's speaking shit, and only other fools could possible believe that he has any credibility. If this gets Drongo his jollies he's welcome to them: he can get his fluffing from those losers for a while.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

Loth, you are correct. Spungled Dumbo does not do data; he doesn't refer to the primary literature; he also consistently conflates global with regional temperature data. He assumes that 1 C is equal across the biosphere - a deliberate obfuscation but a brazenly stupid one as well. In a conference he'd be eaten alive on this point alone. For instance, some parts of the planet have experienced very significant warming - >5 C - over the past century, whereas others have not warmed much or at all. Typically, as predicted by Keeling and colleagues in global circulation models, the farther one proceeds polewards from the equator the greater the warming will be - and has been. Parts of the Arctic have warmed almost 10 C since 1900, most of that since the 1970s; here in Europe its warmed around 2-3 C since the 1980s. This rate is probably not been reached in hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. Its a stupendous change compacted to a time frame in the blink of an evolutionary eye. In warmer regions, other AGW related effects are more based on changes in rainfall patterns and other related phenomena.

So SDs continual reference to 1 C is based on the planet as a whole, which reflects his intellectual limitations as well as his rank dishonesty. The highly significant changes in temperatures in temperate biomes is, as one would expect, being demonstrated in a huge number of studies showing changes in such parameters as seasonal phenology, range shifts, changes in reproductive cycles, losses in body mass, species declines and ultimately unraveling food webs. Some of the research being done by myself and colleagues shows that weedy plants native to southern Europe are expanding their ranges northwards at a remarkable pace; we are already seeing dramatic range shifts in insects, many of which are serious agricultural pests. This point was driven home when I visited Bulgaria last week, where colleagues explained that a number of serious insect pests have invaded and spread in the country from the south in only the past 10 years. Given the immense complexity in the rules governing the assembly and functioning of communities and ecosystems, climate change, in concert with other anthropogenic factors, represents a profound threat to biodiversity.

None of this - NONE - is controversial. That's why there is a certain hilarity in 'debating' (if one can call it that) with a self-educated layman like SD. He's knows diddly squat about the various fields he so brazenly ventures into. I've met undergrads who know ten times as much as him. Referring to biodiversity simply as 'wildlife' yesterday is something I would expect from an intellectual lightweight, so SD did not disappoint.

Perhaps the funniest thing is that he thinks he can stand toe-to-toe with us and achieve some kind of victory. Its all an illusion. I read some of his responses to Bernard and me and cringe at the level of simplicity he expounds in his arguments. But he's so convinced of his arguments that he just cannot see how awful they are. I think to virtually everyone here he is being torn to pieces with every riposte, and certainly he is left clinging desperately to his 1 C meme. Its all he has. His well has long since run dry.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

But he’s so convinced of his arguments that he just cannot see how awful they are.

I'm not entirely convinced of that, hence my attempt to get him to sign up for my very generous deals - generous if his arguments were correct ;-)

His behaviour reminds me of the religious believers who hit upon fervent evangelism as an antidote to their religious doubts. If they spend all their time trying to win others to their belief system they think the doubts will be suppressed, and also it will provide some nicely affirmative mirroring of their beliefs (if they can win some converts). One only has to watch the activity for a while to see that something is very wrong...

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

And having broached that analogy in my last comment, cue the inevitable projection in 3...2...1...! ;-)

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

Well, c'mon Doltoids!! Where's your GAT data for the last 350 years?

That's anywhere near as accurate as the CET?

Produced on instruments, not upside down Tiljander.

Y'mean it's like your SLR?

Either MIA or fakery at the bakery?

And jiffy say he do data.

Where that, jiffy?

Stop wanking, you only do big tits.

And how was your species count today? See anything real?

No?

But you do love to drift by on an evidence-free cloud.

And bern grows grapes. WOOWEE !!

That's all the evidence I need.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

Poor bern's getting bored because he don't know what he's talking about:

http://www.cabnr.unr.edu/research/impact_details.aspx?ImpactID=77

And:

"Gene technology: aims of research and development

Agronomic traits

Resistance against pathogens

Fungal resistance, e.g. against grey mould, powdery and downy mildew. Since 1999 there have been field trials with gene-modified fungal-resistant grape vines in two areas in Germany."

Not to mention Canada and many other cold parts of the world which have never been able to grow wine grapes.

These days even warm wet areas that could never produce wine are doing it because of GM.

You're a boring bag of wind, bern.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

“But you do love to drift by on an evidence-free cloud” opines our scientifically illiterate moron (SD).

From the ISI Web of Science:

Climate Change and extinction: 5017 articles
Climate change and biodiversity: 10,613 articles
Climate change and decline: 13,621 articles
Climate change and range shift: 5,341 articles

Dumbo, you have a lot of reading to do…. enjoy learning about a cloud that is in reality dripping with evidence.

You lose: again.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

Just another story on GM grapes in Canada to help boring, bag-of-wind bern to comprehend:

"The gene was inserted into single grape plant cells via a common soil bacteria, Agrobacterium tumefaciens, which was genetically programmed to deliver the cold-tolerance genes. The transgenic grape cells grew in an incubator, a growth chamber and the Guelph Transgenic Plant Research Complex before being planted at Château des Charmes."

Never been done, hey, bern?

No wonder you don't know anything about SLs when you grow grapes and don't even know anything about them.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

I have to admit its fun demolishing our latest resident crank over and over again.... the only one who can't see it of course is himself, but everyone else certainly does. To suggest also that genetic modification is the only reason crops like grapes are able to grow in normally cold regions is truly beyond the pale. SD has gone beyond parody. He's clearly unhinged.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

"You’ve taken a personal non-verified, non-standardised historical anecdote"

We have been given no evidence that this anecdote is real rather than fictional.

Not even the raw data itself is available. Nor its record.

jiffy luv, that's all very condemnable, but when you don't live in the real world it's all hot air.

If it's like the stuff you spout here it's just like the IPCC models. 99% wrong. GIGO.

Only Doltoids believe it.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

While I am at it on the WoS:

Climate change and phenology: 4,568 articles
Climate change and ecosystem functioning: 5,058 articles
Climate change and nutrient cycling: 2.097 articles
Climate change and coral reef: 2,683 articles
Climate change and ecological interaction: 2,250 articles

Embedded in these articles are tons and tons of data showing clear effects of warming. What deniers like SD do all the time is demand to have the papers waved in front of their faces; they won't for sure look for the papers themselves, not in a million years.

Again, this dope is so easy to demolish. Can't the denier ranks send in someone remotely better?

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

"but when you don’t live in the real world it’s all hot air."

Yes, you do.

Aha! Dumbo's making things up again! Without reading a single paper, he's concluded that 99% of them are wrong! So that's his strategy. In his eyes the world is flat and nothing will sway him from that view. And what an amazing view it is!
And then to claim that only people who write in here believe it! That's kind of strange considering that >95% of the scientific community believes it, every major scientific organization, Academy etc. in every country on Earth believes it, and the data damned well prove it.

SD, can you be even more asinine in your responses?

You are one, complete idiot.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

When darling jiffy actually denies the many articles of evidence of GMO grapes before his eyes it confirms anyone's belief that he is more than somewhat unhinged.

Irrational or what?

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

jiffy luv, talking up your own crap is no recommendation.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

Drongo, CET is not GAT. Sorry, wishing don't make it so. Anyway it's not personally observed by you, so it's moot.

Problem with a global MWP is where is the sea level rise that that supposedly warmer water would show?, if one [you] is daft enough to extrapolate Rosenthal to the globe on OHC. Once again, without your personal observation, it's a conversation for others.

As for GM in viticulture, your link shows some recent work that is being trialled. How does that contradict the statement that cold-hardiness in grape vine is achieved by selection techniques? Of producing vineyards, the number with GM mediated cold hardiness vines would be vanishingly small [maybe you could find even one?]....so how did we get to the point where we grow wine grapes in Minnesota and Ontario right now??
Once again none of this is personally observed by you, so sorry for bringing it up.

Remember, old shitbird, that the Romans made wine in Britain because they like a drop, not because it was warm.

"...the many articles of evidence of GMO grapes..."

how many of these are articles about cold-hardiness, shitbird?

And jiffy, please don't verbal me. I said IF those papers were like the stuff you spout here...

You can't get anything straight.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

"the Romans made wine in Britain because they like a drop, not because it was warm."

Actually two reasons:

1) Religious requirement. doesn't matter how shite it is, you don't drink it when required, you're going to hell
2) It's cleaner than the water. So it only has to be better than the water to be preferable. And the only bit making it safe is the alcohol.

talking up your own crap is no recommendation

One should never do that should one, old bird...thanks for the laugh.

"don't verbal me!".

I get the image of Quasimodo going "Don't look at me!".

What does "don't verbal me" mean? Don't converse with him? Don't use words with him? Don't write words for him to read? What?

#16 Yes, filthy Brits and their dodgy water. Roman wine growing in Britain is a cultural, not climate, proxy

Sounds like shitbird is well soaked already.

Sorry, wishing don’t make it so. Anyway it’s not personally observed by you, so it’s moot.

Q.E.D., but even so it's a lot worse than that, IIRC.

A bunch of those data points were recorded in enclosed spaces, not outdoors like the rest.

And a bunch of those data points were recorded not in Central England but in another country entirely.

No wonder SD, who don't do data quality because it rules out all the "evidence" he wants to cite is hanging his hat on it.

Meanwhile he is no longer cocky about being correct on the alleged CONUS cooling in the NOAA data set since 19xx, and certainly hasn't signed up to the deal in an attempt to take several grand from Dopey old me.

Maybe it's because he'd be paying me a tidy sum if he was wrong...and when there are real world consequences on the line he realises that faux cockiness or outright lies doesn't cut it.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

What does “don’t verbal me” mean?

Police are said to verbal a suspect by extracting a false confession under duress or arranging for false testimony, i.e. putting words into their mouth.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

Not here in the UK, Lotharsson.

And therefore not likely in Australia.

Is this another thing he picked up from the yank site WtfUWT, like the story of how king tides in one place proves sea level dropping?

"Not here in the UK, Lotharsson.

And therefore not likely in Australia."

Wowser, you continually show how much you don't know.

It's embarrassing.

Don't soil yourself any more than you have to.

Now, to summarise, 1/ Doltoids don't do data, only dancing thingos. 2/ Wrong on SLRs. 3/ wrong on AGW. 4/ Wrong on AGW effects. 5/ wrong on CET. 6/ wrong on GM grapes.

Did I miss anything?

I must go now but don't think it hasn't been fun.

By spangled drongo (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

No, spanked, you claiming "it proves how little you know" doesn't ACTUALLY prove how little I know.

Here in the UK and probably therefore the commonwealth countries (that does include Australia, you know) "verballing" someone means basically swearing at and threatening someone.

But your post proves how little you know or care to know.

Drongo's unsurpassed ignorance inverts reality again:

"Now, to summarise, 1/ Doltoids don’t do data, only dancing thingos. 2/ Wrong on SLRs. 3/ wrong on AGW. 4/ Wrong on AGW effects. 5/ wrong on CET. 6/ wrong on GM grapes."

It is always projection. On your latest attempt to make a point: you produced a link to a research program on GM cold-hardiness... drongo, it is only in a trial phase. Meanwhile the industry uses non-GM cold hardiness selection. You failed to back your claim, which is why everyone else is wrong, of course..we know the routine.

"Did I miss anything?"

You missed everything by a considerable margin. Because you are facing the wrong way, shitbird.

Bugger off and eat your dinner.

He has to be spoonfed, Nick.

Though we can't say it hasn't been fun. Normally seeing the mental disintegration of a living human being on the internet happening live is distressing, but sometimes it happens to someone and there's no way it can't be seen as deserved and self-inflicted. Given there was no way we could STOP the mental breakdown (a la Tim "Seawater" Curtis), we don't have any blame to take for it. And it's amusing to see it happen so completely.

He has to be spoonfed, Nick.

Though we can't say it hasn't been fun. Normally seeing the mental disintegration of a living human being on the internet happening live is distressing, but sometimes it happens to someone and there's no way it can't be seen as deserved and self-inflicted. Given there was no way we could STOP the mental breakdown (a la Tim "Seawater" Curtis), we don't have any blame to take for it. And it's amusing to see it happen so completely.

(didn't spell the email correctly)

Wow, the police in Australia earned a reputation for the 'verbal', the re-writing of cell interviews to make them incriminating, particularly well known in NSW and in the Drongo's neck of the woods, Queensland under the kind of government he desperately misses

You not knowing this clearly means you can't know anything else. Because his secret local 'data' disproves global phenomena. See?

"And jiffy, please don’t verbal me. I said IF those papers were like the stuff you spout here"

Well one thing is for sure, you won't be reading any of them anytime soon, because the vast majority of them are data-related studies. And the data will be those that you clearly don't like. What you are expecting me to do is to copy-paste all of them up here for you because you are lazy. And then, even when I post them, you will expect me to feed you, line by line, the relevant bits. At that point you'll run off to your usual retreat: "It's all a load of crap!" or make some similar witless remark.

Good grief SD, you are a dork.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

"Roman wine growing in Britain is a cultural, not climate, proxy" - well put, Nick.

Whereas wine in Sweden this century is an absolute first and is a climate proxy. So are the wineries in central Holland (this century sprouted five of them, they are doing well too, e.g. http://www.maronesse.nl/album/1/ ).

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

Yes Wow, he has to be spoonfed. That is exactly what he expects us to do. He does this because he knows damned well that he's wrong, so his only recourse is to force us to do his homework for him. Until then he will say, over and over again that AGW is all just one big lie. I've encountered so many anti-environmental/climate change deniers during my career to know this is their modus operandi.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

“Now, to summarise fantasise”.

Fixed that for you, Spanky.
(Fits right in with yourtits fixation).

We moved on to WW2 303s later.

You dummkopf SD!

WTF do you think the BEF were using in 1914?

Your history is a ropey as your knowledge of climate science and ecology.

Do stop being an obnoxious ignoramus and learn to read.

And poor silly lionel wonders why I ignore him when he ejaculates crap like “people aren’t good shots, guns are”.

You devious toe-rag SD, those words, in bold, are yours not mine. That is the nature of the beast you are - a slippery 'slithy tove that doth gyre and gimble' who lies.

chek

Fixed that for you, Spanky.
(Fits right in with yourtits fixation).

I suspect that spanky tries to get excited by listening to Gilbert and Sullivan: "On a tree by a river a little ...... Sang 'Willow, ...willow. ...willow'" with a little help from drug companies.

Not here in the UK, Lotharsson.

And therefore not likely in Australia.

That does not follow in this case, or indeed in a number of other cases that your average Aussie/Brit who has spent time on the other side could reel off. It's such a well known idiom here that "you verballed me" is widely understood to mean you put words into my mouth.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

Never been done, hey, bern?

No wonder you don’t know anything about SLs when you grow grapes and don’t even know anything about them.

I did not say that it's never been done Drongo, I said that the cool-climate grapes that I grow are not genetically modified. Further, the grapes grown historically in Britain were not genetically engineered, and in fact I would challenge you to list any commercial vintage anywhere in the world that's produced from MG grapes - you'll be able to count them on one hand with fingers left over.

A kind word for you Drongo. The rest of us here have real, actual knowledge derived from education and professional experience to put in context the fact that you're wronger than wrong. All that you have is the self-conviction of a Dunning-Kruger afflictee. It might feel warm and fuzzy for you, like when you pee your trousers, but it's nothing more than self-delusion. And I know that somewhere in the back of your mind is a little worm, chewing on that lonely neuron of yours, whispering from your subconscious that you youself know my words to be true...

The sooner that you consciously admit that to yourself the sooner that itch of cognitive dissonance will resolve, and the sooner you'll start to see people treat you with less than completely disparaging derision.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

"That does not follow in this case,"

Aye, but there's that word in there: Likely.

So in what way does it not follow that it was likely the same in a commonwealth country as in the UK?

"It’s such a well known idiom here that “you verballed me” is widely understood to mean you put words into my mouth."

Not in the UK.

"Giving someone verbal" is always swearing or violent angry speech.

Think of it this way: it's a contraction of "verbal abuse". Verbal.

Verballing being the activity of giving verbal abuse.

Hey Drongo, you know that bastion of right-wing conservatism in Australia, the farming community? They have real world observations from their world growing crops and stock out there in the environmental covered by climate and all as they are, and they say that climate change is happening, that humans are causing it, that it's a Seriously Bad Thing, and that Tony Abbott should pull his finger out, stop denying the science, and catch up with the rest of the world and do something about it:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-26/farmers-pen-support-for-liberals-…

Why does the experience of the Australian farming community not mean anything? Are you smarter than them too?

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

Drongo appears to be cut from similar cloth to many in the audience that the late Stephen Schneider confronted in 2010, shortly before he passed away:

Stephen Schneider talks to 52 Climate Change Skeptics [PART 1]

If Drongo wishes to disagree then he should first watch and listen to Schneider debunk numerous tired canards that have been broadcast by miscreants in the media and elsewhere, with one such, Ian Plimer, making an appearance near the end of Part 1.

Deadset cobber, no need to bail us up when we're giving ya the good oil. SD's a prize galah with a kangaroo loose in the top paddock, is frequently blotto when he's not gone troppo, and totally has tickets on himself, so yeah, you might have reckoned he was coming the raw prawn. But fair suck of the sav, mate! Give the notion that your average True Blue ocker, especially the drongo kind, might be employing ridgy-didge Strine a burl, eh?

;-)

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 03 Jul 2015 #permalink

Shall I get you a copy of Trainspotter, Lotharsson?

:-P

Chunder: "Watch Under!"
Karzi: "M'khazi" or "To go" in Swahili.

English is quite mutable. The US spelling is mostly an American issue. English spelling far more widespread.

Loth #43 - that was fully sick, bra. :D

Drongo

You can't use the CET as a proxy for global temperatures as already pointed out.

Nor is the early part of the CET reliable, as already pointed out (I can reference this statement if you want).

What 'Roman Warm Period'? I want published references in the palaeoclimate literature describing this event or I will continue to believe that it did not occur.

The warmth of the Holocene Climatic Optimum was NH summer and driven by increased NH summer insolation resulting from orbital dynamics (precessional forcing). The HCO in NO WAY 'refutes' the fact that modern warming is driven by increasing RF from CO2.

Stop using palaeoclimate as a sandbox for your denial. There is *nothing* in palaeoclimate behaviour that lends comfort to deniers. Everything we know about palaeoclimate behaviour strongly suggests that CO2 is an efficient climate forcing and the climate system is relatively sensitive to radiative perturbation. In the case of CO2, you get roughly 3K increase in GAT per doubling.

Skipper Washed Of Boat At Night By Heavy Seas
MOOLOOLABA, Thurs. — The skipper of the 30ft. fishing boat Roma was washed overboard by heavy seas off Double Island Point, 35 miles south-east of Maryborough. yesterday.
He is Richard Prentice who, with Patrick Brownrigg, his companion in an adventurous trip, crossed the bar in the Roma at Mooloolaba at high tide to day. The boat left Townsville on January 13 for Brisbane, and arrived at Double Island Point last Saturday. A heavy easterly ground swell from the cyclone compelled the crew to anchor, necessitating moving the boat from shallow to deep water. On Wednesday, at 2 a.m., a tremendous sea hit the Roma, putting it on its beam ends and smashing to pieces a dinghy which was on board. The hatches of the ice box were swept overboard and the engine room was swamped. Prentice and Brownrigg cleared away the debris and were lifting the anchor when Prentice was washed over board. He managed, however, to swim back and clamber aboard the launch. A course was then set for Mooloolaba, which was reached 12 hours later after battling against heavy east-south-east seas, there was a big break on the bar, and Prentice, not having local knowledge, decided to go on to Caloundra and enter Moreton Bay by the North-west Channel. The seas were too heavy, however, and they were forced to turn back to Mooloolaba. All night they had to steer in circles, and decided that if the bad weather continued they would have to beach the boat in the morning, as they were nearly out of fuel, food, and water. They built a raft, as Brownrigg could not swim, and stood off the bar until high tide to-day.
Tossing In Ocean
A 28-foot launch, owned by R. Gunlack, with Alec. Eadie (skipper) and Reg. Vievers on board, left Mooloolaba last Saturday for Double Island Point on a fishing trip. Anxiety was felt for their safety, but to-night they were seen anchored inside Gneering Shoal, evidently waiting until to-morrow to cross the bar. Heavy seas are running, and when last seen to-night the boat was tossing about badly.

Stephenk, I reckon that Drongo would say that skippers were always washed off boats during July cyclones in the 1940s, and that he and his friends saw it with his own eyes, therefore no global warming...

And any minute now he'll post to say that more farmers were petitioning the govnernment in the 1940s to do something about global warming, than there are who do so today.

Also, I'm sure that he knows why Lepriere would have been too sensible to cut a mark at mean sea level on the Isle of the Dead, but he's just to humble to show off his wisdom...

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 04 Jul 2015 #permalink

Bernard, its an article from an old newspaper. I do a bit of family history research and there are a great deal of old newspapers on line these days, chiefly via Trove. In fact a surprising amount of stuff.
Apart from "news", do you know what else can be found in newspapers...

Old newspapers are a trove of historical evidence and a primary source.
They were also one of the most efficient ways for government departments and public servants to get information and announcements out to the public, especially in rural/ regional locations.
examples:
Water allocation announcements, water storage information, road works, railway works, timetables, weekly stock market reports, grain /wool/sheep/cattle/dairy/poultry/oil/coal etc prices, weather reports, tide reports &etc etc etc.
etc.

Tide times you say.
Like these ones from the Courier Mail and Sunday Mail which used to be published in Brisbane till about 1954?

Fri18/01/1946No Tide info (but the day before was 7'8”)
Tue7/01/19477' 11”9:36
Tue27/01/19488' 1”10:24
Sun16/01/19497' 10”10:36
Wed18/01/19507” 7”9:37
Mon8/01/19518' 0”9:54
Mon28/01/19528' 0”10:36
Fri16/01/19537'11”10:05
Tue19/01/19547' 4.8”9:40

They seem to be the king tide forecasts as published. Fairly easily found. Of which the highest one is the 1948 king tide. I wonder what else could be found...

and weather reports

Fri18/01/1946 Slight seas. Moderate E. to N.E. winds, 10-20 knots. Slight to moderate S.E. to E. swell.
Tue7/01/1947 Seas slight; low easterly swell. Winds east to north-east. 10 to 15 knots, gusty in afternoon.

Tue27/01/1948 Rough seas with heavy south-east swell and strong squally south-east winds. 20 to 30 knots, with heavier squall showers.

Sun16/01/1949 No report, but
Day before; Scattered showers. Slight seas In bay moderate, with moderate
south-east to east swell seawards, winds south-east to east, 10/15 knots, some heavier afternoon gusts. East to north east winds, 15/20 knots by Sunday afternoon.
Day after; Seas slight to moderate with moderate easterly swell in open
sea. Winds north-east to north- west 15 to 20 knots with moderate south-west to south change during the day.

Wed18/01/1950 Moderate seas with south east swell in open water rising to rough. Winds south east to east 15/30 knots with heavier squalls In scattered showers.

Mon8/01/1951 Seas smooth winds light Northwest early but Northeast 15 knot sea breeze In afternoon with bay waters becoming choppy.

Mon28/01/1952 Choppy condi tions in the bay in the after noon, when winds increasing to 15 to 20 knots; winds becoming light north-easterly after sun set, with seas decreasing to smooth to slight.

Fri16/01/1953 Seas slight. Moderate south-easterly decreasing swell open waters. Winds east to north-easterly. 10-15 knots.

Tue19/01/1954 Seas slight to moderate. Moderate east to south east swell open waters. Winds south-east to east 15/20 knots. Isolated showers.

Holy snappin' bumholes Batman (as the kids used to say). That weather for 1948, which was the highest predicted tide of the decade.
"Rough seas with heavy swell and 20 to 30 knot winds"
I wonder if anyone noticed. I wonder if there are contemporary accounts...

But I suppose that Spanky never bothered to look. Despite his claims that he "Personally saw" the king tide data, he's never even produced the information, which, as stephenk here shows, is easily available even for someone who DOESN'T claim to have personally observed it.

So merely producing the list of figures of king tides doesn't prove they were "personally observed".

Ouch.

I think that Stephenk just breached Drongo's sea wall...

Strange that Spangly didn't mention the confounding weather on the highest king tide of the 40s, when for years we've been asking him about it.

I look forward to his explanation.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 05 Jul 2015 #permalink

I look forward to his explanation

So would I, but we'll only get another blurt of self-aggrandizing bluster if anything.

Borrowing from StephenK's comment just upthread:

"Tue27/01/1948 Rough seas with heavy south-east swell and strong squally south-east winds. 20 to 30 knots, with heavier squall showers."

It sounds like there was probably an atmospheric low pressure system which would increase sea level, and then add to that wave setup from the onshore winds, so the sea level would have been even higher than the tidal prediction.

Stephenk - do you have access to atmospheric pressure data for this time? A weather map from the newspaper would be fine.

Neil

By Neil White (not verified) on 05 Jul 2015 #permalink

But what you really wanted was this article published on P3 of the Courier Mail on the 28th Jan 1948.

============
King Tide
Here's Why
YESTERDAY'S tide rose to 9ft. 3in. on the Harbours and Marine Department's Port Office automatic gauge. This was 6 1/2in. above the predicted height.
The reason for the exceptionally high tide in Moreton Bay and the Brisbane River was given last night by Mr. E. C. Pison, engineer and nautical surveyor of the department. He said: 'The moon was full on January 26, and consequently its attractive force was added to the sun's. At present the sun is just past the summer solstice, and its effect on the tide is greater than usual. 'In addition, the moon was In perigee— nearest to the earth — on January 26, and its attractive force thereby increased. 'It is only when these factors coincide that a very high or King tide occurs. These high tides can also occur at midwinter, when the sun is at its winter solstice. The night tide Is then the larger.
============
The chap gives an explanation of why a king tide, but doesn't really explain why the tide was _six and a half_ inches higher than predicted!!

Of course, as alluded to in #54, there are contemporary accounts. The skipper being washed overboard was one from the Courier Mail P1 30/1/48
Here's another from P3, 28/1/48;
LIFESAVERS BATTLE SEA FOR CLUBHOUSE
AN all-day battle to keep a king tide from under mining the Caloundra lifesavers' clubhouse was - waged yesterday by 10 men.
A team- comprising four lifesavers and six Lands borough Shire Council employees erected barricades of large, sand-filled drums and brush to hold the water back. But despite their efforts, the surf formed a 15ft. 'precipice' almost in front of the club house, and undermined the boatshed nearby. Yesterday's big tide brought damage to other sections of the coastal regions. At Maroochydore, slight erosion occurred, and some trees were washed out near the Maroochy River mouth. Most beaches escaped heavy erosion, but 8ft. of sand dunes at Greenmount and 6ft. at Burleigh were eaten away by the surf.
Palm Beach
Fears Palm Beach residents, worried that Currumbin Creek waters might undermine their land, were reassured by the Coolangatta Town Council works foreman (Mr. O. V. Jones) that it was unlikely the creek would cut the high banks. A heavy bulldozer, which was gouging' a channel near the Currumbin Creek mouth to allow banked up water to escape into the sea, crashed down a five-feet embank ment into six feet of water at 4.30 p.m. yesterday. It was towed out again. Some excavations for the new Margate sea wall were damaged and it Is expected that further high tides will suspend construction work on the wall for a week.

And for completeness, in an article of 360 words Cleveland Pt gets a sentence (about 2/3 through). Courier Mail P3 29/1/1948

THREAT TO HOMES AT CRIBB ISLAND
ABOUT two yards of the coastline along .Cribb Island has been eaten away by heavy seas in the past two days. More than a dozen homes are now only a few feet from the shoreline. Residents said yesterday that they were fearing the Weather Bureau's prediction of squally southeasterly winds to-day. Damage occurred yesterday to properties and beaches from Maroochydore to Coolangatta. traffic precautions are being taken at Currumbin, where the beach road has been seriously undermined. A Cribb Island resident said that the coastline was seriously eroded by yesterday's heavy seas, and a store shed behind a house in the main street had been undermined, and partly collapsed. Families were ready to shift furniture at Jackson's Estate when the water entered their houses. Several fences were washed away in Cribb Parade.
Shops Flooded At Currumbin the sea under mined the beach road as much is 2ft. in parts and flooded shops on the seafront. The Coolangatta town Inspector (Mr. A. L. Richardson) said that buses from Southport had been diverted to the Pacific Highway, and parking had been prohibited on the Currumbin Beach road. This would allow buses from Coolangatta, which were still permitted to use the Beach road, to keep to the inside. The high tide had a beneficial effect at Kirra, almost filling in the lagoon fronting the Kirra pavilion.
At Greenmount huge waves washed to within 50 yards of Marine Parade, and the beach was damaged.
Southport beaches were practically unharmed.
At Cleveland point the council park was flooded, and water entered several houses.
Cars Stranded
The Brighton Park kiosk prorpietor (Mr. J. N. Phillips) said water was 18in. over the kiosk floor. Five cars were stranded for several hours. The road leading to the kiosk had been seriously undermined. Gardens suffered moat at Sandgate when Flinders Parade was inundated, and water backed up into several avenues. The Caloundra Surf Club house was still standing on the brink of a 15ft. sand cliff yesterday. At Redcliffe damage occurred to retaining walls at Button's Beach and Woody Point, Scarborough Jetty, and excavations in the new Margate seawall. Council employees started repairs immediately the water receded.

Nick said:
"the police in Australia earned a reputation for the ‘verbal’, the re-writing of cell interviews to make them incriminating, particularly well known in NSW and in the Drongo’s neck of the woods, Queensland under the kind of government he desperately misses"

Wow said:
"Think of it this way: it’s a contraction of “verbal abuse”. Verbal."

"in French and Dutch law (proces-verbal, proces verbaal), a detailed authenticated account drawn up by a magistrate, police officer, or other person having authority of acts or proceedings done in the exercise of his duty."

In Australia, the "verbal" is a corrupt police statement of "facts" as the police would have liked those facts to have been in order to facilitate a prosecution.

Corruption in the various East Coast Australian police forces was an enduring legacy of the behaviour and activities of the NSW Rum Corps and was finally addressed (with some success) during the 1980s.

The scale and penetration into the mechanism of NSW society by this corruption is highlighted by the fact that one of NSW's most notoriously corrupt cops during the 1960s and 1970s, Roger Rogerson, was gaoled for less than 4 years in the '90's and has only just last year (in his 70s) finally been charged with something that should see him deservedly spending the rest of his life in gaol.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 05 Jul 2015 #permalink

It's also interesting that Rogerson was most probably involved in the armed holdup at Bungendore committed by NSW police in mufti that led to Australia's most high-profile assassination at the hands of the calabrian mafia (according to the Italian police) or a convenient local nutter (according to the Australian police):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Winchester

The conviction of the convenient local nutter was yet another astoundingly corrupt episode in Australian policing.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 05 Jul 2015 #permalink

Stephenk - thanks for the link! As you say there is nothing much in the atmospheric pressure.

The tidal predictions are only of the astronomically forced tides. In this case the extra 6" or so is probably largely due to wind and wave setup (water being pushed into the shore).

Interestingly one of the excerpts mentions problems with a creek running into the bay. Fresh water inflows can be another contributor to to changes in coastal sea level. These could well have changed substantially since 1948 with the building of dams and their subsequent use to regulate flows.

Neil

By Neil White (not verified) on 05 Jul 2015 #permalink

'Pause' continues, new German nationwide all-time record.

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 06 Jul 2015 #permalink

Blah, blah sodding blah from Drongo for weeks and now... nothing.

How strange.

Remember the Millennium Development Goals that certain groups like to pillory?

There's good news and less good news - but far more good news than there would be by doing nothing or letting unrestrained capitalism run amok.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 06 Jul 2015 #permalink

MP Dennis Jensen on RN this morning: CO2 on its own would cause 1.1 degree warming, but scientists assume feedback is positive, and their models are 98% wrong.

He doesn't believe feedback could be positive, because then it would be a runaway process.
Feedback has to be negative because if you put the speaker too close to the microphone, the feedback gets out of control.

Yes, never mind the science, the data, the observations, Dennis Jensen's got an argument from personal incredulity.
I didn't listen to the interview all the way through, but the ABC interviewer was pretty tough on him and asked the right questions - even called his story about feedback, a "theory" and you could hear her inverted commas....

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 06 Jul 2015 #permalink

He doesn’t believe feedback could be positive, because then it would be a runaway process.

So, he's never talked to an actual engineer then, let alone a sound engineer who knows about microphones and speakers and shit. And he's stupid enough to spout this shit despite having a Ph.D. in materials science and having worked as a CSIRO scientist.

Either that, or he knows he's lying just like Greg Hunt knows every second time he opens his mouth, but they do it anyway.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 06 Jul 2015 #permalink

BBD, yes, I've been wondering about Drongo's silence - I'm keen to hear his no-doubt-thoughtful answers about the height of the IotD tide mark and the farmers' appeal to Abbott to do something about climate change.

I'm sure that he'll be here soon...

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 06 Jul 2015 #permalink

This should irritate the Denialati:

Global Crisis and climate change in the 17th century

The large amount of social, political and economic unrest during this century led to revolutions and wars right around the world, from Europe and Russia, to the Ottoman Empire, to Asia, Africa and America. But at the same time the world saw a 'Little Ice Age' which saw a drop in temperatures and ensuing failures of crops and food distribution. Eminent historian Geoffrey Parker argues that a fatal synergy between human behaviour and the weather lead directly to the 'global crisis', marking the transition towards modern ways of life, government and thinking.

The 'Little Ice Age' is also evidence that dramatic climate change can occur without human intervention, and the challenge is being prepared for future climate change.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 06 Jul 2015 #permalink

Re: Drongo, I was wondering if the recurring sexual motif towards the end of his recent run of contributions was an indication that he was off his meds, but who knows.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 07 Jul 2015 #permalink

" He doesn’t believe feedback could be positive, because then it would be a runaway process."

Amplification, huh? How does that work???

Well done Stephenk. Is it possible that you've found the antidote to SD's "observations"?

By turboblocke (not verified) on 07 Jul 2015 #permalink

Amplification, huh? How does that work???

Amplification is not physically possible. The models of those circuits add in fudge factors to make it look like amplification is occurring. And even with the fudge factors, which keep getting revised as new "personal obs" come in, 98% of those models are wrong.

Who are you gonna believe, me or the lying engineers and your own lying ears?

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 07 Jul 2015 #permalink

But are you positive? I look forward to your feedback...

Abstract of new study online early Oecologia. Conclusively proves that climate warming - particularly early springs - are responsible for declines in moose populations at souther edge of range. More demolition of SD's piffle. These results are unambiguous. Don't expect our Dunning-Kruger afflictee to answer this any time soon.

Effects of climate and plant phenology on recruitment of moose at the southern extent of their range
Kevin L. Monteith, Robert W. Klaver, Kent R. Hersey, A. Andrew Holland, Timothy P. Thomas, Matthew J. Kauffman

Abstract
Climate plays a fundamental role in limiting the range of a species, is a key factor in the dynamics of large herbivores, and is thought to be involved in declines of moose populations in recent decades. We examined effects of climate and growing-season phenology on recruitment (8–9 months old) of young Shiras moose (Alces alces shirasi) over three decades, from 18 herds, across a large geographic area encompassing much of the southern extent of their range. Recruitment declined in 8 of 18 herds during 1980–2009, whereas others did not exhibit a temporal trend (none showed a positive trend). During those three decades, seasonal temperatures increased, spring–summer precipitation decreased, and spring occurred earlier, became shorter in duration, and green-up occurred faster. Recruitment was influenced negatively by warm temperatures during the year before young were born, but only for herds with declining recruitment. Dry spring–summers of the previous year and rapid rates of spring green-up in the year of birth had similar negative influences across declining and stable herds. Those patterns indicate both direct (year t ) and delayed (year t−1) effects of weather and plant phenology on recruitment of young, which we hypothesize was mediated through effects on maternal nutritional condition. Suppressed nutrition could have been induced by (1) increased thermoregulatory costs associated with warming temperatures and (2) shortened duration of availability of high-quality forage in spring. Progressive reductions in net energetic gain for species that are sensitive to climate may continue to hamper individual fitness and population dynamics.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 07 Jul 2015 #permalink

turboblocke said:
"Well done Stephenk"

Yes, I'd like to echo that. Well done indeed!

Turns out Drongo's "King Tide" was actually a massive storm surge that co-incided with a King Tide.

Ah - the dangers of "personal observations"...

I think the inmates at JoNova need to hear about this...

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 07 Jul 2015 #permalink

yes, excellent stuff from Stephenk...as suspected, a king tide enhanced by local weather set-up. Local weather factors obviously can produce large variation around the predicted level.

What is delicious is that Drongo remembered it as 1946, but 1948 produced the goods...silly old bastard.

It's exactly this sort of thing that leads to the (largely) unforeseen consequences of ecosystem perturbations:

Unique responsiveness of angiosperm stomata to elevated CO2 explained by calcium signalling

Angiosperm and conifer tree species respond differently when exposed to elevated CO2, with angiosperms found to dynamically reduce water loss while conifers appear insensitive. Such distinct responses are likely to affect
competition between these tree groups as atmospheric CO2 concentration rises. Seeking the mechanism behind this globally important phenomenon we targeted the Ca2+-dependent signalling pathway, a mediator of stomatal closure in response to elevated CO2, as a possible explanation for the differentiation of stomatal behaviours. Sampling across the diversity of vascular plants including lycophytes, ferns, gymnosperms and angiosperms we show that only angiosperms possess the stomatal behaviour and prerequisite genetic coding, linked to Ca2+-dependent stomatal signalling. We conclude that the evolution of Ca2+-dependent stomatal signalling gives angiosperms adaptive benefits in terms of highly efficient water use, but that stomatal sensitivity to high CO2 may penalise angiosperm productivity relative to other plant groups in the current era of soaring atmospheric CO2.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 07 Jul 2015 #permalink

We were talking about Scalia earlier. I ran across this. It's at least as bad as the jaw dropping examples of incompetence/lack of grounding of opinions in legal principles and facts as the others.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 08 Jul 2015 #permalink

He doesn’t believe feedback could be positive, because then it would be a runaway process.

As an engineer, Jensen makes a great metallurgist.

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 08 Jul 2015 #permalink

Just had this from Tom Nelson on Twitter,

https://twitter.com/tan123/status/618873976303976452
"Gavin Schmidt occupies Hansen's old office; admits ClimateGate "tipped him into an episode of serious depression""

Bipolar disorder or conscience? Another GISS imponderable
:)

He doesn’t believe feedback could be positive, because then it would be a runaway process.

I really fucking despise it when scientists claim to know less than I do...

Bipolar disorder or conscience?

..almost as much as trolls like Griselda who invent their own (non) realities to hang their worthless hopes upon.

Ah, the Schmidt quote is from a bizarre article in Esquire- are all articles in Esquire this torturous?

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a36228/ballad-of-the-sad-climatolo…

"When the End of Human Civilization Is Your Day Job"

Well quite, the anti fossil fuel brigade are trying to do just that. [We've discussed before, see Alex Epstein at People's Climate March, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mojiBJ55G2g ]

Esquire continues -

"Among many climate scientists, gloom has set in. Things are worse than we think, but they can't really talk about it."
OMG.

"Box and his family left Ohio State for Europe a couple years ago, and he is relieved to have escaped America's culture of climate-change denial."

"Box has been outspoken for years. He's done science projects with Greenpeace, and he participated in the 2011 mass protest at the White House organized by 350.org."

eh.. Ok, I think we're starting to get the picture.

"First, the dirty secret of climate science and government climate policies is that they're all based on probabilities, which means that the effects of standard CO2 targets like an 80 percent reduction by 2050 are based on the middle of the probability curve. Box had ventured to the darker possibilities on the curve's tail, where few scientists and zero politicians are willing to go."

Who is this brave pioneer?.

http://esq.h-cdn.co/assets/15/28/1280x1551/gallery-1436367731-climnick…
(Jason aka "The Box" Box)

"He even chased the media splash in interviews with the Danish press, where they translated "we're fucked" into its more decorous Danish equivalent, "on our ass," plastering those dispiriting words in large-type headlines all across the country."

The bastards, honestly, if you can't trust the Danish press, who can you trust?.

"Box was now working for the Danish government, and even though Denmark may be the most progressive nation in the world on climate issues, its leaders still did not take kindly to one of its scientists distressing the populace with visions of global destruction. Convinced his job was in jeopardy only a year after he uprooted his young family and moved to a distant country, Box was summoned before the entire board of directors at his research institute. So now, when he gets an e-mail asking for a phone call to discuss his "recent gloomy statements," he doesn't answer it."

Didn't take the"transnational elites" long, did it joffrey? Those guys grr....

"Five days later: "Dr. Box—trying you again in case the message below went into your junk file. Please get in touch.""

More climate scientist harassment.

"But gloom is the one subject he doesn't want to discuss. "Crawling under a rock isn't an option [?]," he responds, "so becoming overcome with PTSD-like symptoms is useless.""

Yes, not an option, and PSTD is unlikely to help either - think it's good he thought it thru at least.

"He has left his country and moved his family to witness and study the melting of Greenland up close. How does being the one to look at the grim facts of climate change most intimately, day in and day out, affect a person?"

Well, I'd suggest they go all kinda weird if Box is anything to go by.
;)

The Esquire article is worth a read.

"Among climate activists, gloom is building. Jim Driscoll of the National Institute for Peer Support just finished a study of a group of longtime activists whose most frequently reported feeling was sadness, followed by fear and anger."

Hold on, the National Institute for Peer Support [is that http://nipspeersupport.org/ ?] - Peer Support for Climate Activists. Ok, a study of feart/sad/angry activists? ;)

Their page,

Equals, Not Elites: A New Model to Stop Global Warming
One-on-one, face-to-face outreach
Emotional support Listening Turns and Support Groups
Horizontal Discussions, Action Groups and Spokescouncils
Eliminating Racism in our Movement and Other Oppressions
Volunteerism, Not “Environmental Professionals”

Listening turns? Spokescouncils? Racism?

"Dr. Lise Van Susteren, a practicing psychiatrist and graduate of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth slide-show training, calls this "pretraumatic" stress. "So many of us are exhibiting all the signs and symptoms of posttraumatic disorder—the anger, the panic, the obsessive intrusive thoughts."

"Leading activist Gillian Caldwell went public with her "climate trauma," as she called it, quitting the group she helped build and posting an article called "16 Tips for Avoiding Climate Burnout," in which she suggests compartmentalization: "Reinforce boundaries between professional work and personal life. It is very hard to switch from the riveting force of apocalyptic predictions at work to home, where the problems are petty by comparison."

The "riveting force of apocalyptic predictions", where do you guys stand on this? riveting, or take it or leave it?

Climate-kook blogs like WUWT, ClimateAudit and JoNova have plummeting ratings.
The media are starting to correct their approach to reporting denialist climate-kook nonsense.
Ian Plimer and Bob Carter are embarrassed, unemployable, and silent.
And of course the melting ice, rising oceans, and constantly' increasing heat records all pretty much signal the end of climate-denial anyway.

There are just a few die-hard kooks clinging on to their ludicrous denial.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 08 Jul 2015 #permalink

"Well, I’d suggest they go all kinda weird if Box is anything to go by.
"

There, there, GSW, we know you are in denial. It's the resort to irrelevance and the forced cheerfulness that gives you away.

Those scientists are weird, aren't they? You don't know them or the science, so they must be 'weird'. That'll be the answer! 'Weird'. Tom Nelson and Esquire, that should get you across climate science. That's good enough for you.

Hey, here's another interesting new paper on denialism.

Cue another round of conspiratorial ideation in the usual places. (You've got to admire the authors - they've invented the academic equivalent of a perpetual motion machine ;-) )

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 09 Jul 2015 #permalink

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/08/exxon-climate-change-1981-climate-denier-funding

ExxonMobil, the world’s biggest oil company, knew as early as 1981 of climate change – seven years before it became a public issue, according to a newly discovered email from one of the firm’s own scientists. Despite this the firm spent millions over the next 27 years to promote climate denial.ExxonMobil, the world’s biggest oil company, knew as early as 1981 of climate change – seven years before it became a public issue, according to a newly discovered email from one of the firm’s own scientists. Despite this the firm spent millions over the next 27 years to promote climate denial."

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 09 Jul 2015 #permalink

Climate-kook blogs like WUWT, ClimateAudit and JoNova have plummeting ratings.
The media are starting to correct their approach to reporting denialist climate-kook nonsense.

I think that their "desperation insanity" is also driving people away. The madness is so damn obvious that I can't believe there aren't droves being driven away from the denier blog drivel because they don't want to read that sort of insane raving in support of there being no problem.

Just to check if I've got it right about SD's personal king tide observations: not only did he get the year wrong but he didn't notice the storm either? Is that right?

By turboblocke (not verified) on 09 Jul 2015 #permalink

#92 - the climate revisionists are actually doing the dirty work for us now.

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 09 Jul 2015 #permalink

WRT to that Exxon story introduced by Bernard J above the comments thread there has already been littered with strawmen by rabid deniers. Mention which we had better not let Russell Cook find out about this else he will throw another hissy fit over at DeSmog.

Bipolar disorder or conscience?

At least with global warming denialists we know it can't be the latter.

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 09 Jul 2015 #permalink

Exxon knew of climate change in 1981, email says – but it funded deniers for 27 more years

Lionel, it was very apparent in the Schneider Q&A with a TV audience of fluff headed Aussie deniers that the red herrings that the chosen in the audience had been fed with were provided via a very sophisticated - if shallow - media campaign.

As with the current onslaught of neolib fluff heads insisting on viewing the current Greek situation as akin to those of household finances, it's readily apparent that the provincial global "intelligentsia" couldn't think their way out of an oversoaked paper bag.

That's the weak spot that the likenesses of Exxon et al have been working on, for two generations now.

Thanks Lionel.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 09 Jul 2015 #permalink

I think that the EU has dodged a bullet so far with the Greek situation. It seems to me that the Troika's solution would have been bad for most Europeans as it would have created a country with a very compliant workforce that has intimate access to EU markets. You might say that it was a potential Trojan Horse for reducing workers' rights ;-)

By turboblocke (not verified) on 10 Jul 2015 #permalink

The only justification for charging interest is to cover the risk of default and losing the investment. If Greece isn't going to be ALLOWED to default, what the hell were all the interest payments for, hmm?

Unearned profit.

It is kind of a self-defeating system, rendering the money in one-side flow back to the institute that prints it. Default is the logical end to the process which can then start anew...

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 10 Jul 2015 #permalink

Hell, it's why "trickle down" economics DOES NOT WORK.

Buy a car? Rich: straight out. Poor: loan from a rich person and pay more back. Trickle up.

Renting? Trickle up.

Shareholder value? Trickle up.

Medical research is a huge ripoff, ostensibly evenly, but due to shareholder value, the benefits are unevenly distributed. ANY failure is merely paid off on the price of the next drug. NO RISK WHATSOEVER. If a drug company couldn't manage it, maybe they'd be better at their job. I don't get a pass if I cock it up at work. I have to make good and I'll be penalised for the mistake for years, if not sacked.

If you're not taking risks, you shouldn't be allowed to profit.

If you're profiting, you shouldn't blame the bad risk.

The only justification for charging interest is to cover the risk of default ...

Not exactly. There are two (or more) components - the time value of money and the risk premium. The time value of money recognises that future dollars are not worth the same as today's dollars. If the inflation rate is positive, they are worth less. The time value of money factor for future periods can be estimated by looking at yields on the safest government bonds over the kind of timescales in question (although it gets a lot more complicated if there are currency translations involved in the deal) because they are essentially considered to have zero (or trivial levels) of risk.

Often the interest attributed to the risk premium is simply the rest - the total return minus the time value of money component. This is the portion of the interest that one can consider lenders are being paid for the perceived risk of the deal not being fully honoured.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 10 Jul 2015 #permalink
The only justification for charging interest is to cover the risk of default …

Not exactly. There are two (or more) components – the time value of money and the risk premium.

The second is the same as what I said. The first one is only a manufactured requirement. If I'm not using my money now, it doesn't "wear out" so someone else using it while I don't makes no difference to me. It's nowhere near the rivalrous nature of even letting someone sleep over: they may make a mess or the bedclothes need washing. That doesn't happen with money: it doesn't devalue because someone else touched it.

So I reject the first. And the second is not another reason for profit, it's the same one I put down.

"If the inflation rate is positive, they are worth less."

But if the inflation rate is positive, then my money is worth less if I don't lend it out. The money is only worth what I spend it on.

The second is the same as what I said.

It would be, except that you apply it to the entire amount of interest charged which makes your definition as applied different. If you applied it to the portion of interest over and above the time value of money component, it would be the same. The term "risk premium" is widely understood to identify the portion that is over and above the time value of money component.

The first one is only a manufactured requirement.

Not at all.

If you're not using your money now and prices are going up (as they almost always are), it does indeed wear out because it buys less later than it does now. If you want to maintain your money's purchasing power it needs to grow with inflation. You need more dollars in hand five years from now than you have in hand today. If you put it under the bed (i.e. earn 0% on it) or lend it to someone for five years without charging sufficient interest to keep up with inflation, you'll have less purchasing power in five years than you have today.

...it doesn’t devalue because someone else touched it.

...which was not my point.

It devalues over time - "wears out", if you will - because of inflation (except in unusual circumstances where inflation is negative, where it "wears in"). This effect is independent of whether someone else touched it or not.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 10 Jul 2015 #permalink
The second is the same as what I said.

It would be, except that you apply it to the entire amount of interest charged which makes your definition as applied different.

Only because you insist that your first other aspect applies. Which I say doesn't. Ergo they aren't different.

The first one is only a manufactured requirement.

Not at all.

It absolutely is.

it does indeed wear out because it buys less later than it does now.

No, it's worth less ONLY if there is inflation. And there doesn't have to be, except that we decide we must have more money if we loan it out. We can even have deflation.

If you aren't spending it, inflation makes it worth less. If you loan it at 0% it is worth less, but the difference is zero. If you can't spend it now, then it may be worth less, but it doesn't make a damn difference.

And therefore *inflation* doesn't make money wear out because WE DO NOT HAVE TO HAVE INFLATION.

BUT even if we DO, we're not spending it, so it doesn't mean that we must loan out at interest.

Hell, look at the interest rate you get on current accounts. It's already less than inflation, so your money in many accounts are devaluing just like you say.

Yet we don't get banks being forced to offer at "higher than inflation" rates for ALL bank accounts, do we?

No.

So wanting interest rates is ENTIRELY a social construct.

But to reiterate: if you're not spending it yourself, there's ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE between zero interest on loaning it and not spending it.

So that "wearing out" CANNOT be used as a proof of the necessity of interest rates. We only insist on it, we don't have any independent necessity of it.

Two things to add:

1) The difference between someone saving a billion and someone able to save a paycheck in interest rates available is ANOTHER "trickle up" effect

2) It's part of the New Testament that it is immoral to lend out at interest (usury) so all those Xtians who claim to follow Jesus (hence, for example, cite Paul as to why they hate gay marriage) should stop wanting interest rates and not use banks that loan on interest or give interest on your deposits, They insist that mixed fabrics and shellfish don't count "Because it's OT, not NT". Well, this is NT too.

Go on, have the courage of your moral book.

Only because you insist that your first other aspect applies.

Yes, I do. And so does practically everyone who knows anything about accounting or economics. You are advocating a very fringe position, and one that will cause you financial loss in most cases if you take it seriously.

But no-one can tell ever seem to tell you anything you don't already know, and it's your money, so do whatever you want to do with it! Heck, I'll take an interest free loan any day of the week because I KNOW I can make an essentially risk free return on it! Are you lending at the moment? How much can I get?

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 11 Jul 2015 #permalink

And therefore *inflation* doesn’t make money wear out because WE DO NOT HAVE TO HAVE INFLATION.

And smoking tobacco doesn't cause heart disease or cancer because WE DO NOT HAVE TO SMOKE.

And anthropogenic CO2 emissions don't cause climate change because WE DO NOT HAVE TO EMIT CO2.

Wait, what?!

You may want to re-evaluate which parts of your argument need to be restated in order to avoid relying on this fallacy.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 11 Jul 2015 #permalink

No, it’s worth less ONLY if there is inflation

Of course! That is why my original comment at #4 carefully used the more precise term "time value of money", specified the proxy of "yields on safest government bonds" as a good estimate for the time value of money factor (given that it is well known that they can occasionally go negative), and just to be sure explicitly said that future dollars being worth less on the condition "if the inflation rate is positive".

Accordingly you appear to be agreeing with my point as actually expressed. Perhaps I erred by not explicitly laying out the same precise terms in subsequent comments, assuming that they would be understood by reference?

So that “wearing out” CANNOT be used as a proof of the necessity of interest rates.

Positive inflation rates cause "wearing out", as you appear to agree (except when you appear to disagree, e.g. the quote in my previous comment).

That means that lenders need to charge the inflation rate just to get their principal back in the future. If "getting their principal back" is considered a necessity, then charging interest is a necessity. If you can persuade all lenders that they should get less than their principal back I will agree that interest rates are not a necessity.

Let me know when you're done.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 11 Jul 2015 #permalink

So wanting interest rates is ENTIRELY a social construct.

Er, no, as economists will point out. Consider the following in conjunction with that claim:

if you’re not spending it yourself, there’s ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE between zero interest on loaning it and not spending it

There is a considerable (but not widely understood) difference - in terms of opportunity cost, liquidity level and of course default risk (which we've agreed drives at least some of interest rates charged by lenders, so we're not discussing that here). If you don't have the cash in hand, you can't spend it when you want if some new opportunity arises - and none of us has perfect future information about spending opportunities that we would like to accept. And if you don't have sufficient liquidity you may incur negative impacts via other financial arrangements you may have or desire.

You can go close to the equivalent of "cash in hand" for opportunity and liquidity purposes if you deposit the cash in an "on call" account that is "deposit guaranteed" in a country with a well run banking system and economically stable government - but even a government guaranteed account does not 100% guarantee return of your deposit, let alone return at call (Greece, anyone?) If you loan via other arrangements your situation will almost certainly be less equivalent to cash in hand. Many a investor on a margin account has gone bankrupt because they thought they had a sufficiently rapid ability to call their loans in should a margin call arise, only to find that was not true.

If you put it in a box under the bed you can spend on any opportunity that arises and you have absolute liquidity (although you have a theft or destruction risk!) In this light it's obvious why the time value of money portion of interest rates are often considered to exist partly as compensation for the opportunity costs incurred by lending. (If you want to call this "ENTIRELY a social construct", be my guest - but it doesn't accord with my understanding of "social construct".)

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 11 Jul 2015 #permalink

It’s already less than inflation, so your money in many accounts are devaluing just like you say.

Precisely! And many people don't understand this, and compromise their retirement by deflating their savings in real terms via this mechanism. This is why prudent financial advisers advocate for those with long term investment horizons having a very significant portion of your net wealth in riskier but higher yielding investments. Many poor retirement outcomes are driven by valuing the safety of a deposit account over the higher but more variably yields of other investments.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 11 Jul 2015 #permalink
Only because you insist that your first other aspect applies.

Yes, I do.

Therefore it is contingent on your claim that it IS applied. Ergo prove it must first. Don't beg that question and "assert it therefore it is".

Positive inflation rates cause “wearing out”, as you appear to agree

Just like the passage of time wears us out However, this does not mean that it counts as something that must be recompensed for.

Prove it must be recompensed. Don't just assert it.

Prove that if you were to not lend the money it would earn you more. Prove that.

Go ahead.

I bet you cant, hence your shadowdancing around it.

Precisely! And many people don’t understand this, and compromise their retirement by deflating their savings in real terms via this mechanism

PRECISELY. A devaluation that nobody seeks to insist must be recompensed.

Unless you want to suck up the money from the working and the poor, then by hell you're going to demand your geld.

That is why my original comment at #4 carefully used the more precise term “time value of money”,

Money you have no use for now is worthless, whereas in the future you will have use for the money and it will be worth something. So it's valueless.

Look, try this as a thought experiment.

There is no interest rate. It's zero.

How much are your savings worth to lend out to someone who wants it? If you're GUARANTEED to get it back when you want, then it's worth nothing.

It doesn't detract from you to give it to someone who needs it until you need it yourself.

And if we have inflation, then it's worth LESS then, isn't it.

So why the hell do you demand it be made worth MORE????

Getting it yet? Or is the entire pyramid scheme just so ingrained into your thought processes that it can no more be seen than the pressure the atmosphere has on your body can be felt?

You insist that it has to be made worth more because you have always known it to be so.

It doesn't mean it has to be.

"There is a considerable (but not widely understood) difference – in terms of opportunity cost"

YOU HAVE NO NEED OF IT!!!!!

IT HAS NO VALUE!

THERE Is ZERO Opportunity cost to lending it out because you have nothing to use it on!!!!

Anyone see the articles about a new Maunder Minimum? The deniers are have orgasms.

As long as they won't let themselves notice that it's not solar *output* that's reducing but the number of sunspots that is changing.

Think of it: if it WERE 60% reduction in output, our planet would be between 25 and 80 degrees C colder.

GSW We all know that Tony Abbott is a brainless ol' fart, one who's actions only appeal to other brainless ol' farts such as yourself.

The money is not blowing in the wind anymore. :-) From sustainable energy to un-sustainable in a blink of an eye.

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 12 Jul 2015 #permalink

And Scribe is so happy by the latest news from the settled science dep. that he can't write coherent. :-)

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 12 Jul 2015 #permalink

Woof woof, lappers!

Yeah, they've squandered the money on guns and nukes, so they're cutting where the least money against the idea lies.

Goodness. Repeating yourself already?

I guess this proves why you're in denial, though, Garry: you're not pro industry, you're anti environment.

Old stupid Olaus shoots himself in the foot once again. Remember him meaning 'extinct' when he said
'instinct'? He's at it again. Read his latest nugget:

"And Scribe is so happy by the latest news from the settled science dep. that he can’t write coherent"

The word, Olaus, is COHERENTLY.

If you insist on submitting your witless little quips up here, at least be sure that your don't end up with pie all over your face.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 13 Jul 2015 #permalink

"It’s Official: Warmists Are Mad"
http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2015/07/official-warmists-…

"Credulous journalists have found a new genre of stories: climate scientists on the verge of a nervous breakdown. If you go by a recent spate of reports detailing the near-suicidal despair afflicting the warmist elite, something called ‘pre-traumatic stress disorder’ is prompting climateers to set aside their computer models and report for treatment. It seems that working long days tweaking temperature records and cherry-picking data to conjure apocalyptic scenarios takes a dreadful toll — especially with the real-world halt to warming now stretching to 18 years and beyond."

GSW

Deniers are becoming increasingly desperate and now making themselves laughing stocks in the eyes of more people than ever as awareness of the truth grows. Like the curves of rising GHGs and temperatures the slope is tightening upwards at last.

"now making themselves laughing stocks in the eyes of more people than ever as awareness of the truth grows."

I don't think so Lionel. Take those clowns, sorry "climate change activists", over at Heathrow,

"Heathrow Airport climate change protest delays flights"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-33503167

dressed in polar bear suits, they're the laughing stocks surely.

"I don’t think so Lionel. "

Of course you don't: the moron is the last one to know that the joke is on them.

Hey, and why are you against the stopping of industry? You're 100% for it when it comes to renewable energy production industry. So why not the "short haul pleasure flight" industry?

Sorry Jeffie, had an orgasm when I posted. ;-)

By the way, any news of your brethren, the emperor penguins that suffer from lack of sea ice?

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 13 Jul 2015 #permalink

Tango Mike Indigo, Lappers.

It DOES show why you're a laughing stock, though.

And it isn't because you're funny.

Therefore it is contingent on your claim that it IS applied.

Sigh.

It's really not that hard.

1. The time value of money quite obviously does apply from the straightforward observation that inflation exists, an observation that you agree with (at least some of the time).

2. In that case if one earns interest on loaned capital over any time period greater than zero, the first X% of the interest merely counteracts the time value of money factor. In other words, for an essentially risk free loan you need to charge X% merely to get your principal back (in real dollars, i.e. the same spending power) at a later date.

3. Any lender smart enough in matters of finance - i.e. essentially all commercial lenders, and a fair few non-commercial lenders - to consider how much interest they must charge in order to get a good return on the perceived risk of the loan is also smart enough in matters of finance to know that it has to charge X% even on an essentially "risk free" loan merely to achieve return of the loaned principal in real dollars, and therefore if it wishes to charge Y% as compensation for risk that Y% must be in addition to the X% required to achieve risk-free return of principal.

Conversely, any lender dumb enough to say "I'm charging N% interest on this loan, but time value of money is irrelevant, so I'm getting N% compensation for risk, not (N-X)% - what a great deal!" is miscalculating the risk-reward profile and almost certainly exposing themselves to far more risk for the reward than is prudent. This goes double if N < X.

All of your objections do not change any of this. You need X% on an entirely risk free loan to merely get your money back in real terms, and you need more if you actually want to be compensated for risk. If you're stupid enough to consider the time value of money irrelevant to your risk-reward judgement then more fool you.

I sincerely hope that you have not made serious financial decisions using your notions in these matters. There are plenty of sharks out there who will eat you alive if you misinterpret compensation for lending the way that you have.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 13 Jul 2015 #permalink

It’s really not that hard.

No, it isn't. Yet you still reiterate the conclusion that you wish to prove as its proof.

Currently the money you aren't spending is worthless.

If you keep the money for your retirement, inflation makes it worth less (or if it makes it worth more or the same, then the entire claim is moot, so we're neglecting two entire scenarios here, BUT THEY STILL EXIST, OK?).

So it's actually worth nothing to you. Until you need it. THEN it's worth what you can get for it.

In the meantime? Worth nothing. It's not even paper.

1. The time value of money quite obviously does apply from the straightforward observation that inflation exists,

And as I show above, that means your money now is worth less if that is the case.

Also

2) Deflation exists.

3) Stagnation exists.

BOTH of those indicate the reverse of your claim being valid.

Or did we just invent the recent deflationary period?

2. In that case if one earns interest on loaned capital over any time period greater than zero, the first X% of the interest merely counteracts the time value of money factor.

Except that it's worth nothing to you because you don't have anything to spend it on that you want and inflation means by the time you DO want or need to spend it, it's worth less.

Yet here you are demanding that you be recompensed for your lack of wanting to spend it now.

consider how much interest they must charge in order to get a good return on the perceived risk of the loan

And this brings me right back to something you COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY failed to get into your noggin:

ME, POST #3If you’re not taking risks, you shouldn’t be allowed to profit.

So do you accept that zero risk, zero profit?

I sincerely hope that you aren't a selfish asshole who just thinks that they DESERVE more money because they have some already.

WORK FOR YOUR FUCKING PAY YOU LAZY ARSEHOLE!

The first one (real interest) is only a manufactured requirement.

That's what the Soviet Union declared early in its history.

You can look up how that turned out.

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 13 Jul 2015 #permalink

That’s what the Soviet Union declared early in its history.

Two things:

1) Red Scare??? Really?????
2) Citation Needed.

Oh, a third thing:

3) Irrelevant. Who cares what you think the Soviets said? Does it make it automatically wrong because the Soviets said it? Bullshit. Which really gets me back to:

Red Scare???????

By the way, Chris, do you know who ELSE said it was wrong?

Jesus
Christ

That's right motherfucker.

The Big J.

Sounds of a thousand Merkin heads exploding to try and not know this has shattered Tokyo and awakened Godzilla...

"And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you? For even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much back. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil. Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful." - Luke 6:34-36

"Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you." - Luke 6:38

Of course, like shellfish and paying taxes to your government, the bits of the bible that will affect YOU are ignorable, whilst those that inconvenience others or "justify" your hate are just dandy and unalterable.

See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury

In this one 4 minute interview Eric Rignot pretty well blows out of the water everything the deniers have been saying about AGW and glacial retreat.

http://climatecrocks.com/2015/07/13/the-agony-of-the-climate-scientists…

Its much, much more dire than even the models have predicted. This interview annihilates all of the shit spewed out by the likes of SD, OP and GSW on here. The latter has the gall to talk about activists being laughingstocks when its idiots like him who fit the bill.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 13 Jul 2015 #permalink

Currently the money you aren’t spending is worthless.

Bollocks, as previously explained (noting again that you appear to be advocating a notion of "worth" different from everyone else who talks about finance matters, which may be contributing to your confusion. It may even be that your definition considers ANY investment "worthless" until you cash it in and then spend the money on some non-investment matter, which would be abject nonsense if true.)

BOTH of those indicate the reverse of your claim being valid.

That's mendacious. You're insisting that a carefully bounded claim is invalid by pretending it wasn't bounded, applying it outside those bounds and then attacking the resulting strawman.

You wouldn't let a climate science denialist get away with that in the climate science domain, so why are you letting yourself get away with it here?

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 13 Jul 2015 #permalink

Wow, you're a very smart person, but that also makes you able to rationalise things to yourself better than most. Let me try one last probe before concluding once again that no-one can EVER successfully point out a problem with one of your positions.

If I understand your view correctly, there is no such thing (when the situation is correctly understood) as compensation for the time value of money via interest charges. The entire amount of interest charged is purely compensation for lending risk. Anyone who thinks otherwise is merely deluded.

Let us apply that view to some evidence. Please correct any misconceptions I have of your view and answer the questions in the following:

A. In the US, T-bills and T-bonds - short term and long term US Treasury bonds issued by the government - are widely considered to be essentially risk free USD investments. (In most other countries with well run political and economic systems, their governments issue bonds that are similarly considered to be very low risk investments in the currency of issue.) T-bills are simpler for our purposes because there are no "coupons" (structured interest payments), but a straightforward extension of the same kind of analysis applies to T-bonds which do have coupons.

T-bills have a maturity date and denomination (i.e. face value). You can buy a T-bill with denomination $D directly from the issuer today for $X, and if you hold it until the maturity date you then receive $D back (in nominal dollars - no interest is directly paid). In other words, you are effectively lending X$ to the government and being paid $D back at maturity. (There is also a secondary market.)

Q1: In your view of loans and investment finance, properly understood, there is no such thing in loans or investments as compensation for time value of money, only compensation for lending risk. Since T-bills have essentially zero risk, what is the fair (e.g. arms's length) price for a $D denominated T-bill with a future maturity date? Is your answer "essentially $D, no matter what"? If not, why not?

Q2: T-bill prices paid to the issuer and prices for secondary market transactions are publicly available. Examination the price data history shows that the price paid ($X) is often quite significantly different from $D - and more so when inflation is running higher than when it is running lower. The divergence and maturity date are widely used to calculate implied yield rates, i.e. implied earnings much like an interest payment that is due at maturity.

Given your view, why does that fairly significant divergence in prices exist, given that the vast majority of T-bill investors are sophisticated in matters of finance? Why are implied yields not bound in practice to be very close to 0%, regardless of inflation rates?

B. In countries with well run political and financial systems, large banks are considered very low risk deposit takers. In other words, lending the bank money by (say) taking up a term deposit is considered a very low risk loan. Let us concentrate on term deposits that pay a single interest payment at maturity, which simplifies the analysis. The extension to term deposits and at call accounts that pay periodic interest is straightforward. In the following questions it goes without saying that the large banks are not acting out of charitable motives towards their customers.

Q3: In your view of finance, why do all the large banks pay non-zero interest on a term deposit AT ALL? If a lender cannot expect to be compensated for the time value of money, only risk, and the risk is almost zero, hence the compensation should be almost zero.

C: Following on from (B), we note that the world over, when the appropriate central bank raises or lowers interest rates, banks raise or lower the rates they pay to their lenders on term deposits (and also the rates they charge to their borrowers). Imagine for the sake of argument that at time T1 the central bank interest rates were 2% and the bank was paying 1% on its term deposits, then later at time T2 the central bank rates were 5% and the bank was paying 4% on its term deposits.

Q4: In your view of finance where interest is all compensation for risk, does the fact that the term deposit rates have risen from 1% to 4% mean that the bank is now 4 times more risky as a borrower from its term deposit customers? If rates rose to 10% would they be 10 times as risky?

Q5: If the central bank dropped rates to 1% and the bank followed suit by dropping its term deposit rates to 0%, would that mean that the bank now has zero risk?

Q6: If the central bank dropped rates to -1% and the bank offered -2% on its term deposits, would that mean that the bank was now considered a negative risk? What would a negative risk deposit taker actually mean?

D: You have $Y to invest and you wish to construct an investment portfolio by making one investment in each three countries, each of which has their own currency with their own prevailing inflation rate. Let us imagine for the sake of argument imagine that you can move money from country to country with only trivial transaction costs, and for the sake of understanding we translate all amounts from their native currencies to your home currency.

Also for the sake of argument, let's pick some nice round numbers. Say that in country C1 the inflation rate is -1% (e.g. Japan 1999), country C2 has 10% and country C3 is unfortunately experiencing hyperinflation with rates at a cool 1,000,000% (e.g. Zimbabwe middle of 2008). Fortuitously you find a potential investment in each country that all have the same maturity date and that you assess to all have exactly the same level of risk! You do your due diligence and consider the fair value of the risk premium in each case to be 2%. In C1 the investment offering pays inflation + 5%, i.e. 4% total. In C2 the offering pays inflation + 4%, i.e. 14% in total. In C3 the offering pays inflation + 3%, i.e. 1,000,003% in total. Accordingly, no matter what one's view of finance matters is all three pay more than the 2% fair value risk premium.

Q7: How do you split your $Y across the three to construct your portfolio?

Q8: How does your competitor (who foolishly thinks that interest rates must first compensate for the time value of money) construct his $Y portfolio?

Q9: Once all the investments mature and the proceeds are repatriated to your home currency, who comes out ahead?

And finally, the grand daddy of all the questions.

Q10: Given the above, does your "all interest is purely risk premium" position concord with the evidence and analysis? Or does it lead to conclusions that are either financially detrimental to act upon or are outright absurd?

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 13 Jul 2015 #permalink

Please stop with the financial stuff. I come here for climate discussion

Currently the money you aren’t spending is worthless.

Bollocks,

Nope, fact. It's not even paper.

as previously explained

No, ...as previously ASSERTED WITHOUT SUPPORT...

Try supporting your claim rather than going "nuh uh! totally money! Inflation! I wanna!"

you appear to be advocating a notion of “worth” different from everyone else who talks about finance matters

Only because you're living inside a closed bubble where you've never heard of anything other than "We has moneyz, you gives us more moneyz, biatch!".

For over 1200 years Europe didn't do interest rates.

Muslims don't do interest rates.

Co-operatives loaning you to build your home don't do interest rates. The USA did a hell of a lot of that sort of thing in the 19th century. It still happens today.

Kickstarter is just such a loan.

Your problem is that your head is entirely up your own arse on this subject and you're not able to see anyone else with a different opinion because of the location of your optics and auditory system.

Q3: In your view of finance, why do all the large banks pay non-zero interest on a term deposit AT ALL?

In your view of finance, why the hell do banks get away with less-than-inflation rates on deposits?

Oh, by the way, zero rates for current accounts is VERY COMMON. Hell, they have that PLUS charges.

Oh, if you have pots of money, you get a better rate.

But this ONCE AGAIN indicates how completely clueless you are about what happens in the real fucking world, rather than the privileged state you think is "what IS!".

Completely nutbar wrong on the whole thing.

Scribe, read the title of the thread.

So, entirely as expected, you completely refuse to answer almost all the inconvenient questions, throw up a flurry of distraction complete with at least one obvious fallacy and your usual insults, and you hope that no-one will notice the unanswered questions.

(Now, what does that behaviour remind us all of?!)

In the mean time half the audience will likely answer the questions for themselves and then ponder why you have conspicuously failed to square your position with them.

Assuming that I and that half of the audience are all as deeply mistaken as your insults-in-place-of-answers suggest, i.e. that you can in fact square your position with those questions and indeed the wider reality, thereby demonstrating that the entire field of research and practice is as deeply in denial as the climate science denialists are, then I look forward to your peer reviewed paper(s) on the topic, your subsequent Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, and the rewriting of all the Finance and Investment textbooks.

Just one or two teeny weeny questions: when should I expect to see the paper(s) and your Nobel nomination? And will you autograph my copy of a new textbook once you're in it?

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 13 Jul 2015 #permalink

"Now, what does that behaviour remind us all of?!"

I've pointed this out several times in the past.

I remember, ianam. I've done the same once or twice myself.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 13 Jul 2015 #permalink

ianam, I'd also have pointed out earlier if I had thought that it would help (and wouldn't provide distraction fodder) that I'm not a registered financial or investment adviser in any jurisdiction. However I've developed services that required me and my team to learn the first several stages of the required coursework for advisers in order to collaborate with those domain experts and to not cock up our part of the work through sheer ignorance or incompetence.

Now I can't guarantee I remember everything correctly, but it's quite plausible that I have at least half a clue ;-) And just like climate science, I'm not saying what I'm saying is right because of my own competence (or otherwise) in the domain. I'm saying that it's generally about right because it's the heavy consensus of the experts who have had a long time to debunk it, and have not done so. Heck, some of the domain experts I worked with were professors of Finance/Economics at top tier institutions who literally wrote textbooks.

The very early stages of that coursework require one to understand the time value of money and risk premium (amongst other notions of investment risk), and as one proceeds further through the material it becomes obvious that you cannot do an effective job of investment analysis or portfolio construction (efficient or otherwise) without those two notions, and even more. You certainly can't use more sophisticated techniques on more complex investment vehicles if you screw up the notion of risk premium that badly, and you can royally screw whomever follows your advice if you do so. And if you have horked risk premium in that way and you are taking your own advice on finance matters, then just like the joke about the guy who defends imself in court - you have a fool for a client.)

Another irony is that the service in question has been rather successful in two key respects - it has been managing a metric shitload of other people's money for a number of years now, GFC or no GFC, and it has been commercially successful over that time period too. There are a bunch of competing services too, and I'd bet that none of them employ Wow's definition of risk premium either.

So not only have I done some of the relevant coursework, not only have I worked with some experts, not only am I citing the expert consensus, but I've helped build a real world service whose success in those two dimensions is very difficult to explain if Wow's position is correct, and I've personally made a very nice chunk of change from the effort. (Someone tell SD, who thinks anyone who disagrees with him is probably useless in the real world. ;-) )

All of that, of course, makes me (and those experts?) ignorant of how more basic concepts like "interest on deposit accounts" work in the real world, right? ;-)

So I don't know about you, but I'll reconsider Wow's position if and when he (or someone else) either puts up a peer reviewed paper that (a) takes care to precisely define his mental model and then (b) carefully apply it to standard investment scenarios, which means it must (c) answer the kinds of questions that I asked (which are merely the tip of the iceberg of questions that a competent adviser would ask) and (d) demonstrate that the author has a decent working knowledge of the research domain and may be able to defend his position in light of the wider understanding, and (e) doesn't get quickly torn to shreds like the average climate science denialist omnishambles does.

Alternatively, I'll reconsider it if Wow runs an investment organisation using his methods that develops to rivals the size of the service I helped to build, and does so for long enough and transparently enough to provide evidence that his methodology for pricing certain kinds of risk might be superior.

(Anyone want to bet on when that kind of evidence might arrive? The bet must be adjusted for the time value of money over the lifetime of the bet, of course!)

In the meantime, cue the next round of red herrings, non sequiturs, misinterpretations and other distraction attempts. However, in the absence of the kind of evidence for reconsideration that I outlined above, I reckon my point is made.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 13 Jul 2015 #permalink

Um, I don't actually care about your or Wow's position, and I doubt anyone else reading any of this does either.

You seem to be under the insane fantasy that I am somehow saying that banks DON'T charge interest.

Why the hell you think this is anyone's guess.

Either that or you think that all you have to do to prove that interest rates are necessary is to show that they're USED, but that's equally insane.

You seem completely unaware that for centuries moneylenders didn't charge interest. You also seem completely unaware that there are bank accounts that don't PAY interest. You also seem completely aware that there are loans that don't require interest payments. Oblivious to the fact that there's fractional reserve banking which means that most of the money doesn't even exist.

And you insist on shrieking insanely that BANKS WANT INTEREST RATES!!! will somehow prove that they have to.

NONE of this insanity actually means squat.

Yell about how banks do this and the answer to why is "Because they can", which is 100% the same fucking reason why banks pay lower rates to your savings than they loan out to others, and less than the rate of inflation.

Because they can.

All your ranting is doing is proving you haven't a fucking clue why there are interest rates AND that you don't give a shit about why.

Why?

Probably because you want to believe you must profit from your spare cash, without lifting a finger.

"Um, I don’t actually care about your or Wow’s position"

Well, keep us posted, won't you, about any other positions taken you don't care about.

I guess lappers and gitter are ecstatic that you care about their positions, though. It totally validates them.

Me? I couldn't give a rotted monkey's tackle.

"In the meantime, cue the next round of red herrings, non sequiturs, misinterpretations and other distraction attempts. However, in the absence of the kind of evidence for reconsideration that I outlined above, I reckon my point is made."

Made to whom? Another thing I've pointed out here is that the whole process of giving evidence and reasons within a framework that is bounded by the rules of logical inference only works when all the participants play by those rules. That's why these "debates" go on and on ... there's no winning against those who simply ignore the rules.

"I’ve pointed this out several times in the past."

And anyone cares about your opinion why?

Mind you, Lotharsson totally acts like Tim "Saltwater" on this. His attitude and approach to "proof" are 100% identical.

Just pointing it out, like.

#55 is a fine example. It's just noise, with no logical content because there's no intellectual honesty at the source. Debating with people like this is akin to the frog complaining to the scorpion about its sting.

"the whole process of giving evidence and reasons within a framework that is bounded by the rules of logical inference only works when all the participants play by those rules."

And going "BANKS *DO* CHARGE INTEREST" isn't proof they must.

Hell, ignoring that loans without interest rates exist NOW really does blow the insistence that they must out of the water.

Loans must charge interest rates == Swans must be white.
Loan doesn't charge interest rate == A black Swan.

Kickstarter. A loan that doesn't charge interest to a developer for a product.

Hell, share issuing is a non-interest bearing loan.

Two proofs that interest rates don't have to exist.

But apparently to Lotharsson this isn't visible at all. There must be interest rates.

Because.

"#55 is a fine example. It’s just noise"

So what the hell were YOU adding?

Were you adding proof that interest rates must exist? Or that they don't?

No, you were just wanting to snipe. Sound and fury, no content.

Then patting yourself on the back with your contentless posts and ironically proclaiming error because some posts I made didn't address interest rates.

Irony and hypocrisy.

Very denier. GSW couldn't do better.

tu quoque is the first fallacy schoolchildren learn to employ, and the most dishonest. But that's the nature of this beast. I'll leave it to its flailing.

"So, entirely as expected, you completely refuse to answer almost all the inconvenient questions"

Your questions were ALL "Banks DO charge interest! Why is that?"

It was also a Monckton-level gish gallop.

Nowhere did you prove that interest had to exist. I asked a question. A VERY SIMPLE one:

Prove that if you were to not lend the money it would earn you more. Prove that.

But nowhere was the answer found.

Maybe you buried it under your gishing.

"tu quoque"

And pointing out hypocrisy isn't tu quoque.

Also tu quoque doesn't work if YOU are the first one to do it. It only works on the one who does it later and then points to another "but they did it too!".

And it isn't even a fallacy if you're not basing your argument on it.

And it also isn't defence of your hypocrisy.

You need to know what tu quoque is. Much like deniers don't know what ad hominem is, but still try to yell it out like some abracadabra defense charm, proof against all attack.

Red Scare???????

Do you claim to be anything other than a communist???????

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 14 Jul 2015 #permalink

Made to whom?

Well, not to Wow, obviously, for the very reason that you cited. A near complete unwillingness to honestly represent what I said doesn't help. I imagine that some of our other readers (now or later) are willing to consider evidence and inference and might care but you raise a very good point - it's entirely possible no-one who fits that description exists or even will exist.

So on that note, back to climate science, or whatever else catches the collective fancy.

Here's one for Scribe. How about that new conference presentation from Zharkova et al that has been touted as a prediction of a "mini Ice Age during the 2030s"? They have used PCA to fit a pair of curves to 3 cycles worth of data, although I've seen some scientists say there is not really a good physical motivation for the dual curve approach yet. They are predicting 2 cycles ahead on that basis, and I haven't seen anyone claiming they've done any decent validation outside of the fitting period yet.

Even if it turns out to be a good prediction, there has been absolutely massive overhype of the conclusions from that exercise, aided and abetted by what seems to be a complete failure to robustly calculate the expected impact if the predicted event does occur, especially against the much warmer climate baseline that we have now compared to the 17th Century. I've seen analyses putting the impact on irradiance at about -0.1 W/m^2 max, maybe -0.2, which would only offset a handful of years warming trend, and even then only while the Solar Minimum lasts. (It doesn't help that according to Sou at HotWhopper, Zharkova was on the radio touting appearing to tout standard denialist bollocks such as "the polar caps of Mars are melting simultaneously with our global warming" and claiming the predicted event would result in a 3W/m^2 drop).

Even some sites that make at least a show of presenting reasonably accurate scientific information (e.g. iflscience.com and sciencealert.com) have fallen for it. I guess our usual suspects will tout it here in a week or so - they're usually quite late to jump on the latest denialist bandwagon and rather chuffed to drop a 6 day old well-chewed bone in our laps when they do. Besides, when Sou wrote her piece WUWT hadn't covered it, so how they heck would they know what to think about it until he does? ;-)

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 14 Jul 2015 #permalink

I've never claimed to be a communist.

Nonsequitur from a redneck unable to manage reality noted.

By the way, have YOU ever claimed to be anything other than a communist????????

A near complete unwillingness to honestly represent what I said doesn’t help

Uh, you've only every done a "Well, banks have interest, why is that?".

What argument have you made for it being required other than "they do it"?

None.

I see, mind, that you've abandoned even the pretense at being able to answer MY question, running off as if somehow not being able to prove that not spending your money would earn you more than if you loaned it to someone at no interest (a la kickstarter or share purchase) is somehow MY fault.

"Well, not to Wow, obviously, for the very reason that you cited."

WHAT reason?

The Big J.

As if I care.

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 14 Jul 2015 #permalink

"As if I care."

So you think that the New Testament is a communist manifesto (yet I bet you think Stalin is an atheist) and that Jesus Christ was a commie pinko...

And let us note that you cared about Reds Under The Bed enough to post bollocks three or four times about it.

But I'll tell you why you should care: for 1200 years and more the European world (and therefore much of the basis of the USA's current political identity) used that guy's teachings to define what was allowed and what wasn't.

It was an offence to demand interest in Europe for 1200 years, punishable by execution. And for much of the 19th Century there were huge cooperative ("communist") combines that were used in the USA to build homes. Everyone chipped in and paid for each home to be built and then that person paid back WITHOUT INTEREST so that the next home could be arranged.

And even today there are many such cooperatives and indeed Muslim banks cannot charge interest and do not.

Why?

Because even if YOU pretend you don't believe in gods, THEY DO.

And you know what? Despite not charging interest, those muslim banks still manage to work.

Proving interest isn't necessary on loans.

Indeed doing so increases the trickle up economics and enriches the already wealthy and impoverishes the poor.

Unless you're in the top 10% of the USA, you're being sucked dry. And THAT is why you should care.

"what is the fair (e.g. arms’s length) price for a $D denominated T-bill with a future maturity date?"

$D. But how does this prove that interest rates are valid and deserved?

"Given your view, why does that fairly significant divergence in prices exist"

Rent seeking predation. But how does this prove that interest rates are valid and deserved?

"does the fact that the term deposit rates have risen from 1% to 4% mean that the bank is now 4 times more risky "

No. But how does this prove that interest rates are valid and deserved?

"If the central bank dropped rates to 1% and the bank followed suit by dropping its term deposit rates to 0%, would that mean that the bank now has zero risk?"

No, it always was risk free (if it were not, then your question is moot since if there IS risk, there then is valid reason to demand more money back than loaned. Also, central bank still has 1%. Why? But how does this prove that interest rates are valid and deserved?

"If the central bank dropped rates to -1% and the bank offered -2% on its term deposits, would that mean that the bank was now considered a negative risk?"

No. But how does this prove that interest rates are valid and deserved?

"Q7: How do you split your $Y across the three to construct your portfolio? "

I don't. I don't HAVE to spit $Y. Your cases are predicated on the conclusion you wish to prove by it being proven already. See "Begging the question". But how does this prove that interest rates are valid and deserved?

"How does your competitor (who foolishly thinks that interest rates must first compensate for the time value of money) construct his $Y portfolio?"

Why do you claim it foolish? Again, begging the question: your set up requires that the thing you wish to prove is correct to then set it up so as to show it is proven.

But anyway, how does this prove that interest rates are valid and deserved?

"Q9: Once all the investments mature and the proceeds are repatriated to your home currency, who comes out ahead?"

Who cares? I'm no more harmed by someone else getting ahead than I'm harmed by someone retelling a joke I told them and getting more laughs from it.

But how does this prove that interest rates are valid and deserved?

"Given the above, does your “all interest is purely risk premium” position concord with the evidence and analysis?"

No. But that's because it all insists that interest must be paid because "someone is using YOUR STUFF to get ahead of you!!!!".

Do you know what "begging the question" means?

How does this all prove that interest rates are valid and deserved?

I'd like to point out that "who comes out ahead?” is where the real "envy" comes out. And why the rich are the ones AT LEAST AS GUILTY AS ANYONE of it.

Hell, it's entirely why we have such inane copyright laws: "I wrote this and sold it, but that person is making money off it! THAT'S THEFT!!!!" or, even more egregiously "I USED to make money off it, can't see enough profit off it any more, but THAT PERSON THERE is selling copies, THAT'S MY MONEY!!!!".

It's why sharing your music (even such as MyMP3 where you had to prove you already have a copy, just not one ripped and available on the internet) was killed: the absolute fear that someone else somewhere is making money you could have made (but couldn't be bothered with).

And why the wealthy still covet yet more wealth: someone else may be passing them by in wealth, someone richer is becoming EVEN RICHER. And that's bad. Because. Um. WELL IT JUST IS, RIGHT?

Pot bellied stove was invented AND GIVEN AWAY because the inventor wanted it to benefit people and giving the idea away cost them nothing at all other than time they enjoyed spending on it, and they too get to benefit from a more efficient cooking and heating appliance.

"Who comes out ahead" is why capitalism is JUST AS DOOMED as communism. Who cares if someone comes out ahead? WERE YOU HARMED?

Lotharsson, I absolutely do not expect you to answer the few very simple questions I asked, because you just aren't willing to think.

But try your scenarios again where the central bank and all banks everywhere loan out at 0% interest and answer yourself.

What changes?

ay I suggest to the gentlemen/women discussing economic issues that there appears to be some confusion between micro-economics and macro-economics. Broadly, Lotharson's view point is from micro-economics, while that of Wow really rests on macro-economics. In the macro world of today, things are wildly different to the typical micro view, which is consistent with the view of every one as a householder, running a small business, etc. In the macro world, a sovereign government that issues its own currency is nothing like a household and things are very different, although most people just don't seem to get their heads around this. Consider, for example, that the Central banks that issue the currency sometime pay zero or negative interest on the deposits they hold (from other banks of course)

Perhaps this distinction might help resolve the contradiction?

Consider, for example, that the Central banks that issue the currency sometime pay zero or negative interest on the deposits they hold (from other banks of course)

Thanks for the suggestion, but this particular feature is already present in my discussion above so I do not think it will resolve any disagreement.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 14 Jul 2015 #permalink

Apropos my previous comment, IIRC this discussion arose out of a comment about the risk/return equation as it applies to the lenders to Greece, and accordingly it's not even a discussion about a sovereign government that issues its own currency.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 14 Jul 2015 #permalink

It was an offence to demand interest in Europe for 1200 years, punishable by execution.

While not denying the existence of interest-free loans, or the possibility that the time rate value of money can, on occasion, be zero or negative, it may be of interest to know that this specific aspect of your argument is incorrect in three respects:

1. Timeframe. I infer that your 1200 year reference spans the period from the Nicaean Council in 325 to Henry VIII redefining usury as excessive interest (thereby permitting "reasonable" interest charges) in 1545. Even if that inference is incorrect, these represent the greatest span over which that claim could possibly have merit. However the Nicaean Council banned usury (in the older sense of charging any interest) by clerical lenders only. Lay people were not forbidden to charge interest. While it was regarded with distate, it was still legal in Roman civil law and continued to be so after the fall of the Western Empire. It was not until Charlemagne (c.800) that civil legal proscriptions started to come into force. Thus the period is about half the suggested 1200-year span.

2. Penalties. There may have been jurisdictions where usury was a capital crime, but I don't know of any. In general, this was a civil issue, and settlements dealt with the tort (financial damage) that had arisen. The usurer (or their heirs) were typically required to repay any interest charged, and could face additional fines. Of course, that required the debtor to take the creditor to court, and even then, the system favoured the people with the money. Usurers also faced religious sanctions if brought before a canonical court, up to and including excommunication. Of course church law had no force with non-Xians, which is why Jews could conduct money-lending without facing any problems beyond the existing quotidian bigotry.

3. Theory -v- practice. There were legal loopholes of course. In practice, much commercial lending became a profit-sharing joint-venture arrangement. For other loans purchase-repurchase contracts might be created with a price differential being interest in all but name - pretty much like pawnbroking, with similarly "usurious" rates. For the big players, providing credit to ruling houses might be rewarded with access to royal revenue streams or outright control of royal monopolies. Credit and repayment might be denominated in different currencies, with a tidy exchange rate bump factored in. At their peak, before the contraction caused by the Black Death, and a collective rejection of their practices, Italian banks were making profits on lending varying between 20% and 50% in a European economy that was growing at about 4%. The debt management arrangements had all the same features as recent "debt restructuring arrangements" including the "austerity" measures imposed on Greece.
But perhaps the most interesting form of "usury in all but name" was the Contractum Trinium, which explicitly broke a loan into three components which have been recognised in this discussion - the principle, a forced insurance component and a "sale of profit", a notional sale of profits to the lender, granting them the profits once the borrowers return on investment exceeded a certain level.

While the structuring is slightly different, and semantically its not usury, the effect is indisguishable from a contemporary loan-with-interest arrangement.

Random fun fact - loans attracted interest as far back as the Sumerians.

We now return to our regularly scheduled unedifying sniping...

Further to my para 2, if Wow knows of a jurisdiction where usury was a capital crime, or an instance of such a sentence being carried out, I'd be interested to hear it.

Frank, go to the wiki for a sample of cases where it was punished by execution (absolved if you converted to xtian).

totaram, at the very least you're thinking and listening,loth isn't doing either. I consider loth's claims being "We have interest somewhere, therefore we must have it everywhere" *at best*, and more likely WE HAVE IT THEREFORE WE MUST! But I'll consider your view of his claims to see if there's a phrasing that will get past his blinders. Cheers

According to IMDB, in the latest episode of Mission Impossible (available at a multiplex near you from July 30th) Tom Cruise saves the ... IMF.

Howfucking exciting is that???

For those uninterested in finance, apologies and please skip this comment.

So some answers to my questions arrive, including this question obsessively repeated:

But how does this prove that interest rates are valid and deserved?

The question is still not relevant to my position because it is still not predicated on that claim, and never will be. My position simply rebuts your claim (as I understand it) that interest received on a loan is always and everywhere entirely payment for risk. Now, I reckon I can strip the rebuttal down to a much clearer core and express it more effectively than I initially did, so in the hope that it will shed some light here goes:

(1) Consider a loan that pays R% interest (measured in nominal dollars so that we can avoid discussion of the time value of money). The lender wishes to attribute K% of that interest paid to risk premium. If interest received is said to be always and everywhere entirely attributable to risk premium, then always and everywhere we must have K = R.

(2) In order to determine (or estimate) K, one must first determine (or estimate) the risk free rate of return (Z%) that is achievable in the market.

If one claims "I'm getting paid K% interest for the risk factor", then by definition one is claiming "I would get paid K% less if the risk factor were zero". Similarly, if one were to claim that "the fuel usage 'load premium' for my vehicle is 2L/100km when I carry this 1 tonne load", then by definition one is claiming that "my vehicle would use 2L/100km less if I did the trip without the load".

(3) Estimation of Z% must use the best rate that can be achieved by sufficiently low risk investments that are investable at will on the open market (e.g. the implied yield of T-bills, or another very low risk investment that is investable at will on the open market).

One cannot estimate Z% by reference to very low risk investments that deliver suboptimal rates of return, any more than one can estimate the fuel usage "load premium" by reference to driving scenarios that produce worse fuel economy than is routinely achievable by taking care. This rules out referencing risk premium calculations to the "investment" of "cash under the bed, earning 0% nominal", for example.

(4) The implied yield of T-bills is not bound to be zero percent or very close to it, as a cursory look at historical market data reveals. It is often significantly higher than 0%, and it forms a lower bound for estimates of Z%. Hence in general Z != 0.

(5) Therefore in general K != R.

I also note that some of your own answers to my questions obviously and even directly acknowledge that (4) and (5) are true! However, despite the appropriate questions to stimulate your thinking having been handed to you on a plate you refuse to follow through the implications. Some of your answers appear to imply "my position is true always and everywhere - well, except in that situation, or that one". Another answer explicitly rejects your own position and then makes the most feeble attempt at rationalisation I have seen in a good long for denying your own rejection. Observers might conclude that you've been doing an awful lot of the "not thinking" that you have been accusing me of.

Returning to your question above, note that none of this argument relies on or makes any claim about the validity or deservedness of interest rates paid or received - merely the amounts achievable via different investments. Similarly, I note that:

I consider loth’s claims being “We have interest somewhere, therefore we must have it everywhere” *at best*, and more likely WE HAVE IT THEREFORE WE MUST!

...bears no resemblance at all to my position, as previously indicated.

Finally, note (to the relief of everyone else!) that I consider that further repetitions of your miscomprehensions or irrelevancies require no additional response.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 14 Jul 2015 #permalink

The question is still not relevant to my position because it is still not predicated on that claim,

So what the fuck IS your claim? Is your claim or position that we HAVE interest rates?

If so, then you've wasted a shitload of time of EVERYONE here because SO FUCKING WHAT?

MY position is that usury is wrong. And it is proven in the hoarding of wealth and all the problems that creates.

It is the CAUSE of the failure of trickle-down economics.

If your only position is that we have interest rates, my position on that is whoop fucking doo.

Got anything on why we can't have usury banned?

Wow, I can't find an actual example of anyone being executed for usury, or having that sentence remitted on conversion, anywhere in the Christian world on "the wiki" or on the well-known search engine. If you do know of one, some info beyond "find it yourself" would be helpful. And in the absence of such, we can only conclude that the claim is without foundation.

It's only one of your 95 theses, so you don't need to be too wedded to it - no point in doubling down on a losing hand, when you've got 94 other ones*. Naturally, I'll happily concede on presentation of evidence.

*sounds a bit like JayZ

"can’t find an actual example of anyone being executed for usury," - me neither, but it likely happened and may still happen in some muslim countries (I saw a kind of case from Iran).

Originally, the law against usury for Israel carried the death penalty.
Ezekiel 18:13 -> http://biblehub.com/ezekiel/18-13.htm .

Usury was a component of last century's virulent antisemitism, would it be too far fetched to call the Shoa, among others, a 'collective death punishment' for that? (Imo: yes, too far-fetched: the 'argument' was agitprop).

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 15 Jul 2015 #permalink

Well, part of the antisemitism was so that the wealthy could use it to default on their loans and even gain extra.

As long as it didn't happen *too* often, it was treated as a "cost of doing business". It was a big part of European culture that really helped the Nazi propaganda stick: centuries of misanthropic depiction of jews.

Because if there's one thing a rich toff hates more than a commoner with money, it's OWING money to one.

In 1275, Edward I of England passed the Statute of Jewry which made usury illegal and linked it to blasphemy, in order to seize the assets of the violators. Scores of English Jews were arrested, 300 were hanged and their property went to the Crown.

My position simply rebuts your claim (as I understand it) that interest received on a loan is always and everywhere entirely payment for risk.

Well, there's your fucking problem, mate.

THAT ISN'T MY CLAIM.

My claim is that interest can ONLY be morally valid when it is used as a means to payback risk.

Zero risk: zero interest is the only moral and fiscally sustainable course.

"Well, part of the antisemitism was so that the wealthy could use it to default on their loans and even gain extra."

Yes. Happened not only to Jews, but most often. Happens to certain groups/minorities all over, e.g. Armenians/Assyrians or generations-long expat Chinese in the Far East who created wealth from trade and free professions.
#87, totally concur.
#88, yes, typical example.

But can we count them and those, FrankD?

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 15 Jul 2015 #permalink

#90 Wow - would you agree that a sanction like a fine on a loan that is repaid too late, to be incrementally increased over periods of time, would be justifiably, morally & fiscally sustainable?

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 15 Jul 2015 #permalink

I find Lotharsson's commentary useful and informative. I also have some college education in economics (top of my class) and accounting (perfect score on final exam; is any other score acceptable for an accountant?).

I read most of the commentary but not all of it so I might have missed the "capitalistic" part, where investors shop for the best return and "morality" is simply not part of the equation, neither moral nor immoral.

I am entertained by Wow's stubbornness. I am amused that he invokes Christianity on a blog that probably has very few Christians.

By Michael 2 (not verified) on 15 Jul 2015 #permalink

Wow says (at 84) "MY position is that usury is wrong."

Yeah, okay, I get that. You are in debt and you wish you weren't and especially wish you didn't have to pay "usury".

Someday you'll have some money either to deposit in savings or to invest and then suddenly you'll be very happy with "usury".

Morality is irrelevant in finance because while Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) exist, no generally accepted moral principles (GAMP) exist.

In the realm of finance, law exists, morality does not. Morality can become law if enough people believe in the same moral principles.

By Michael 2 (not verified) on 15 Jul 2015 #permalink

No, because you did no work for it. Or only work you yourself made, therefore a self-inflicted cost. This didn't stop banks sending you a letter saying you were overdrawn and then deduct another £15 for sending it, but when a student turned the tables back on them and charged for a letter, they took it to court to get it annulled. The court agreed that there was no difference between the two, and that they owed the student money for the letter sent to them.

It didn't take long for the banks to decide not to do that any more.

Other areas had judges agree that the costs were not acceptable and declared illegal and the rules changed.

This shows that the idea above as to why the cost is not acceptable to pass on is currently considered valid.

Jeff Harvey says (at July 1, 2015)

"...is as always speaking on a subject way out of his depth."

Maybe; but is it also out of your depth?

"He has not got a clue about ecophysiology"

Maybe, but do you have a clue? All I see is you, and many others, disparaging each other without contributing much in the way of useful information.

"and does not plainly read the primary literature"

Maybe. It is certainly true in my case with tens of thousands of "primary literature" published every year most of it requiring payment and nearly all of it at the behest of whoever paid for it.

"except relying on fringers who publish little, if anything in the primary journals."

Maybe; but is certainly true for me. Why would I read Consensus Bibles if I doubt their veracity and am suspicous of their intentions and have no money for that sort of thing anyway?

"These clowns are not worth the time of day."

And yet here you are giving these clowns quite a lot of your time.

By Michael 2 (not verified) on 15 Jul 2015 #permalink

My claim is that interest can ONLY be morally valid when it is used as a means to payback risk.

Thanks for that clarification! When you said in your original comment that:

The only justification for charging interest is to cover the risk of default and losing the investment.

I took those words at face value, because "justification" is a much broader category than "moral validity".

Regardless, even in the context of a purely moral argument about payment for risk or paying back a loan, it is not "a waste of time" but rather a key issue to define what it means to "get paid" for risk and to "pay back", given what we know about the time value of money. Many people will disagree with your position on those grounds, or due to differences in the application of moral reasoning, or other reasons. And obviously we aren't going to agree on that issue, so there's no point discussing the issue itself any further.

C'est la vie.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 15 Jul 2015 #permalink

"Zero risk: zero interest is the only moral and fiscally sustainable course."

This is self-evidently complete rubbish.

Finance is a resource belonging to one person and temporarily made a available to another person, and the cost of using somebody else's resource has to reflect more than just the risk that the resource will be lost.

Replace finance with "crane".

I want a crane, I don't have a crane, I find somebody who does and they give it to me for 12 months, during which time:
- the crane's intrinsic value decreases as a result of passing time (same as money does - except in Japan).
- the original cost of the crane is also something the person owning it wishes to be compensated for, same as an artist wishes for his performance to be rewarded with cash. Nothing immoral about this.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 15 Jul 2015 #permalink

Why it is critical to resist - and interview of Chris Hedges by Derrick Jensen, two men whom I greatly admire. This interview pretty much demolishes all of the nonsense Stu2 was putting up here about DGR some time ago.

http://prn.fm/chris-hedges-06-21-1

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 16 Jul 2015 #permalink

Has anyone seen Drongo around the Denialati traps? I really want to pin him down on some of the questions I asked him...

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 16 Jul 2015 #permalink

"Replace finance with “crane”." - then REPLACE it, Craig, because you're talking total nonsense now, mixing it all up here:
" the crane’s intrinsic value..."
But: intrinsic value in terms of cranes!
"the original cost of the crane..."
But: the original cost in terms of cranes!
Not in money, by your substitution.
Get my point already?

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 16 Jul 2015 #permalink

Wow #94, still Craig makes a point in #96 here: "Finance is a resource belonging to one person and temporarily made a available to another person, and the cost of using somebody else’s resource has to reflect more than just the risk that the resource will be lost."

This need not have to be reflected in usury like Craig seems to implicitly assume, though.

"No, because you did no work for it. Or only work you yourself made, therefore a self-inflicted cost."
Hm, hm. I'd say investing is doing work. Doing work is also always a 'self-inflicted cost'.

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 16 Jul 2015 #permalink

I took those words at face value, because “justification” is a much broader category than “moral validity”.

To what extent did your "expansion" make your mistaken assumption about my claim valid?

Because it STILL doesn't make it "interest received on a loan is always and everywhere entirely payment for risk". That statement STILL appears to be a fiction YOU created then argued against.

Looks to me like you're trying to make it my fault rather than take the blame on yourself.

and the cost of using somebody else’s resource has to reflect more than just the risk that the resource will be lost.

Resources aren't money. If it's your time resource, you don't get those hours back. If it's your petrochemicals, you don't get those back.

So, no, it isn't valid: you get your money back. And you get exactly what you gave. No change.

Here from the Wiki is Thomas Aquinas:

St. Thomas Aquinas, the leading scholastic theologian of the Roman Catholic Church, argued charging of interest is wrong because it amounts to "double charging", charging for both the thing and the use of the thing. Aquinas said this would be morally wrong in the same way as if one sold a bottle of wine, charged for the bottle of wine, and then charged for the person using the wine to actually drink it.[35] Similarly, one cannot charge for a piece of cake and for the eating of the piece of cake. Yet this, said Aquinas, is what usury does. Money is a medium of exchange, and is used up when it is spent. To charge for the money and for its use (by spending) is therefore to charge for the money twice. It is also to sell time since the usurer charges, in effect, for the time that the money is in the hands of the borrower. Time, however, is not a commodity that anyone can sell.

– the crane’s intrinsic value decreases as a result of passing time (same as money does – except in Japan).

No, you're asserting the result you're proving as if it were the proof.

Money doesn't degrade over time like crane usage degrades it. Wear and tear is why you have to maintain your crane. No wear and tear on money.

Do you demand payment for merely OWNING a crane? After all, it is still passing time and going to need replacing at some point, so whether it's being used or not, there's *some* degradation.

So your "logic" insists that you should be paid MERELY FOR OWNING A CRANE.

That's rubbish, right?

So is wanting to be paid money because you have some and aren't using it.

NOTE: Loth's whining about how I'm misrepresenting his "argument" is here again PRECISELY summed up with "I HAS MONEYZ GIVE ME MORE MONEYZ!!!!".

Just because it's prhased as an insulting infantilism doesn't mean it's misrepresenting the argument, because the argument IS infantile.

Here's the idea for you, Craig, DON'T USE YOUR MONEY. Put it under your mattress where you get 0% and then see how much money you made from not using it.

If someone else COULD use that money to make a profit BY DOING SOMETHING, why the hell should YOU be paid for SOMEONE ELSE'S initiative and ability?

You want profit from your money, YOU find out what to do with it to make a profit. Stop leeching off the capabilities of others who have a better idea.

To what extent did your “expansion” make your mistaken assumption about my claim valid?

Sorry, what do you mean by "my expansion"? I can only imagine that you mean the combination of your imprecise expression coupled with my inability to read your mind, which I coped with as best I could by interpreting the actual words you used assuming that you meant them - and my interpretation of what was written was entirely valid.

As I'm unlikely to develop mind-reading skills any time soon, the best option for improving the situations seems to be to say what you mean with more clarity.

Because it STILL doesn’t make it “interest received on a loan is always and everywhere entirely payment for risk”. That statement STILL appears to be a fiction YOU created then argued against.

I see you're projecting like an IMAX again. Been a lot of that lately.

But to your charge that I created a strawman:

The only justification for charging interest is to cover the risk of default and losing the investment.

What part of that, interpreted to actually mean "the only justification", do you think should suggest to someone (who isn't privy to your thoughts but only your written words) that according to your position interest can be charged for factors other than risk? What part of that do you think should suggest to a reader other than yourself that if your position is considered to apply to loans, then some of the interest can be considered payment for something other than risk? And in that context, what part of your rather obvious rejection of my position that interest payments comprise compensation for factors other than risk do you think should suggest to a reader other than yourself that your position is not that interest is payment for risk and only payment for risk?

And since to a 3rd party I reckon my interpretation of what you actually wrote is entirely plausible, but you know that it's not what you mean, then who bears the responsibility for correcting the impression given? Who alone has the information required to detect the difference between what you meant to say and how what you actually said has been interpreted?

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 16 Jul 2015 #permalink

Sorry, what do you mean by “my expansion”?

OK, try "rephrasing" instead of "expansion".

Now, answer the fucking question. Or will I have to give a synonym for "answer"?

Oh, byu the way youridiculous moron, YOU were the one claiming that "justification" was an "expansive" term.

But I guess you only understand words when you like to. Because you're a fucking idiot who prefers to play Brad Keyes games with words. And for the same reason.

Just because it’s prhased as an insulting infantilism doesn’t mean it’s misrepresenting the argument, because the argument IS infantile

You're absolutely right! Your amusing infantilism doesn't mean that you're misrepresenting my argument. Instead one concludes that you are misrepresenting the argument because you're not fairly representing my argument, as has been made clear. That, and your almost tragicomical penchant for insulting other people (not just me) on the basis of your own incorrect inferences makes you look like an immature asshole with a large blind spot.

If you aren't actually going for that kind of impression you might want to reconsider the way you do things.

And since you insist that my argument is that which I already clarified that it was not, I ask again:

Where have we all seen that kind of behaviour before?

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 16 Jul 2015 #permalink

Now, answer the fucking question

Oh, I see the problem. You have problems with fairly straightforward English and don't recognise an answer when it's right in front of your face! Friggin' heck, I had no idea you were so limited in comprehension ability!

But here's the thing. I'd normally feel a bit sorry for someone so obviously struggling and want to help them out, but when they are being as big a prick as you have been for as long as you have I find that feeling hard to muster.

If you don't like that change your approach or get someone else to assist with English comprehension.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 16 Jul 2015 #permalink

So not only Brad Keyes, you're aping Stu2.

Well done, you fucking moron.

Look, you are avoiding the answer for the same fucking reason Stupid or Bray avoids it, and using the same methods shows you're as bad as them.

Hush, kids. Shoo!

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 16 Jul 2015 #permalink

Yeah, right. That is productive. And mature.

FFS.

But can we count them and those, FrankD?

Well, its not what I was expecting, cRRK, and I'm not sure whether we can or not. The reference in Wikipedia isn't sourced, but I suspect the "300" figure refers to the 293 Jews executed in London at that time, but for retonsione, or coin-clipping, rather than usury. Coin-clipping, as a form of petty treason, remained a hanging offence into the 19th Century.

Nevertheless, for the purposes of this discussion, their execution was coincident with Edward I's laws against usury, and the convenient fiction used to execute these people is really immaterial, so I'll happily concede that Wow's claim has some backing. Were this discussion more specifically about these events, I might push the point - I think the Wikipedia claim is wrong, but that's not Wow's problem, and it's not very relevant to the totality of his argument.

But while I'm on the topic, I would observe that these executions (as I say, under a legal fiction) was really to allow Edward to seize their assets. Edward had borrowed a king's ransom (literally - twice the value of the ransom paid for Richard I a century earlier) to his Jewish subjects, and he used the acts of 1275 and 1290 as an excuse to default on the debts owed and seize Jewish assets (including the debts owed to them by private borrowers) for the crown. He pulled the same stunt in Gascony as well (then ruled by England). But having expelled his Jews, he no longer had a line of credit through them and had to look elsewhere, turning to his Italian bankers. Already players in this market, they acquired a near-monopoly on credit supply to the English crown. As per some of my earlier examples, their payoff was not "interest" but in crown revenues. With a tighter revenue stream, the crown thus needed to borrow more, which required handing over more revenue streams and so on, until 50 years later the banks pretty much owned the whole lot. It's kind of the equivalent of Greece having to pay 100% of government revenue to pay the interest on their loans.

Securing their position involved proxy economic wars on the continent (manipulating wool prices to break the rival Flemish industry for example), and virtually stripping England of silver coinage. A confrontation had to come and eventually Messer Eduard, as they contemptuously addressed him, declined more punitive debt renegotiations and - backed by an army with a recent string of stunning victories - told them to go fuck themselves. His default rippled through the whole European credit system, and had it not been swamped by the chaos of the Black Death, was probably enough by itself to trigger post-Roman Europe's first financial-collapse-driven depression. Laws against usury didn't prevent sharp practitioners making a fuck-ton of money from the simple business of lending it, with or without interest.

That was a longer event, including many different people who were done for clipping et al. It didn't result in hundreds of people arrested in one operation.

But you're right that it doesn't really matter much on the fact that usury was forbidden and that there doesn't have to be interest on loans and wasn't for a very long time.

It makes even less sense when fractional reserve banking means that most of the money you lend out doesn't exist.

It's breaking any fairness on actual things. You can't loan out a crane to 10 people at the same time.

#11 Wow, indeed.

Incidentally, you answered some of my questions. E.g.: Money doesn’t degrade over time like crane usage degrades it. Wear and tear is why you have to maintain your crane. No wear and tear on money.
This looks completely sound to me.

So it's time to analyse the value of money. Or what does it represent and is that quality a constant representable by a constant quantity (of money), etc?

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 16 Jul 2015 #permalink

Something else. There is cost and risk involved with lending money. It is, as long as the loan contract lasts, not available to the lender. This may bereave the lender of choices in life (cost) and it may put him in very awkward positions in case he suffers some setback that he would easily have solved if held onto that money.
I'd say a price can be asked for these, though as a one time only payment attached to the details of the contract (amount, time span). ?

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 16 Jul 2015 #permalink

FrankD #12, thank you vm.
" these executions (as I say, under a legal fiction) was really to allow Edward to seize their assets." - Indeed, so Wow noted last page. This was actually a king's or regime's motive in very many cases of hunting an ethnicity. With centuries of hunting and settlement/integration cycles landing them in banking, trade, science etc.

Looks to me rather established that if usury is mentioned in a death sentence it will usually if not always be accompanied by some other accusations, fantasy ones if need be. Apparently usury is not really a capital crime anywhere, even where it is banned or severly regulated.

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 16 Jul 2015 #permalink

"It’s breaking any fairness on actual things. You can’t loan out a crane to 10 people at the same time."

The monetary system is a big bad ffing dream. Total illusion and chronic mass hysteria.

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 16 Jul 2015 #permalink

Wow said:
"So, no, it isn’t valid: you get your money back. And you get exactly what you gave. No change."

This so bone-headedly wrong it just blows my mind.

$100 in 1900 is absolutely not the same thing as $100 in 2000. It's completely different.

And money most definitely *is* a resource. You use it to obtain goods, tools, services, property....
You use it to generate an income or a lifestyle. And the person who lent you the money you use to generate your income needs to be compensated for your use of their resource on account of both the opportunity they are forgoing as well as the depreciating value of the resource they have lent you over the period you retain it.

I have absolutely no idea what WoW is trying to argue. He certainly isn't stupid enough to believe the nonsense he is spouting and he is certainly smart enough to know what he is saying is complete rubbish.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 16 Jul 2015 #permalink

WoW said:
"Money doesn’t degrade over time like crane usage degrades it. Wear and tear is why you have to maintain your crane. No wear and tear on money."

I didn't say it was usage of the crane that degrades it, although it might be the case.
If you buy a state of the art crane in 1970, by 2000 it will be expensive to run and demonstrate poorer performance compared with modern cranes. Hence its value as a resource is reduced. Hence the people who borrowed it during this time are *morally* obliged to compensate its owner for his depreciating resource.

Take the 386 PC you bought in 1990 for about $4,000. Let's say you never took it out of its box, so no usage to degrade it.
Now compare it against a dual-core Intel bought in 2015 for $1200.
What's the current value of the 1990 386 PC? Nil. Its value reduces over time, as does cash money.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 16 Jul 2015 #permalink

Wow asked, somewhat naively,
"If someone else COULD use that money to make a profit BY DOING SOMETHING, why the hell should YOU be paid for SOMEONE ELSE’S initiative and ability?"

Hence people enter into loan contracts by which both parties gain what they want. It's called a trade. And a couple of centuries ago we came up with the idea that a trade is a win for both parties.
If you don't want to pay interest, find a lender who believes in one-sided trading. Or just rob somebody to get what you want.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 16 Jul 2015 #permalink

Also, I'd like to share with you what I think is the funniest thing to happen this year since Tony Abbott ate a raw onion in front of the media:

http://20committee.com/2015/07/15/trump-and-hitlers-recreated-bodyguard/

"... a new campaign ad (left), tweeted out by Trump’s account — a frankly tacky montage of the American flag, Trump’s visage, the White House, a stack of Benjamins (of course), and some armed troops — had a problem. A big problem.

The troops depicted at the bottom, you see, weren’t American. No GI Joes here. Who exactly was Trump recommending help him #MakeAmericaGreatAgain? Oddly, Germans. Worse, they were World War II Germans — you know, when the guy with that trim mustache was destroying Europe and genociding millions.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 16 Jul 2015 #permalink

I'm sure Ken Cuccinelli is as we speak preparing an indictment against GEORGE DURNER for crimes against fossil fuels.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 16 Jul 2015 #permalink

"“It’s breaking any fairness on actual things. You can’t loan out a crane to 10 people at the same time.”

The monetary system is a big bad ffing dream. Total illusion and chronic mass hysteria."

Actually the above point demonstrates what it is that Wow misunderstands about money: he thinks its value rests in the face-value of the currency that is used to represent it.

As the above snippet demonstrates, the value of money is independent of the numbers printed on the currency - if the bank can lend to people more money than it actually has, this only goes to prove that the intrinsic value of money is not what Wow misunderstands it to be.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 17 Jul 2015 #permalink

So it’s time to analyse the value of money. Or what does it represent and is that quality a constant representable by a constant quantity (of money), etc?

Definitely.

And the hoarding and trickle-up of money is why.

The other option is to deal with the problem money gives in a capitalist system (we could deal with both, though). Capitalism means money is power. And if you have money spare, spending it is losing power.

We really need to break that link.

Not really because "morality" but because the result is increasing inequality of money and power and the problems society has for it.

Something else. There is cost and risk involved with lending money.

Yes. However, this isn't anything I've refuted or disagreed with. Right from #3 on the previous page I said that risk is a valid argument for interest.

But what that DOES mean (and definitely never means in media) is you don't fucking whine and whinge about how you lost that money you loaned.

You know, like the whining and whinging about Greece possibly not paying their "debt".

THAT WAS YOUR FRIGGING RISK YA BASTARDS!!! Don't want to risk losing it? DON'T LEND IT OUT!

“So, no, it isn’t valid: you get your money back. And you get exactly what you gave. No change.”

This so bone-headedly wrong it just blows my mind.

Yeah, and that is the same boneheaded bollocks GSW and Stupid et al when they "consider" the reality of AGW.

You have $100. One month later you have $100.

No loss.

Simple maths.

Even four year olds can manage that.

I didn’t say it was usage of the crane that degrades it,

So the owner of a crane should be paid merely for owning a crane?

Fucking lazy bastard.

Do some work you twat.

Hence people enter into loan contracts by which both parties gain what they want. It’s called a trade.

And then payday loan people find that they owe £100,000 because their £100 loan was run over and couldn't ever come back because they have no idea.

And, yeah, right, the loan is a "agreement"....

Fuck you're either hideously naive or you're a misanthropic retard.

As the above snippet demonstrates, the value of money is independent of the numbers printed on the currency

And therefore is worthless if you haven't got anything to spend it on.

It's only worth what you want to spend it on.

Zero.

".. and the problems society has for it." - well, that's what morality is for.

#26 totally ffing agreed including the (even rather mild) wording.
So Greece is today able to repay 3.5 billion euro to some bank because it just got it from another (central) bank. Why not give it all to that fucking bank directly.

More general, A has a debt with B, B has a debt with C who has a debt with A and never will anything be cancelled away - because interest! That is the monetary reality and that is the big bad dream.

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 17 Jul 2015 #permalink

“.. and the problems society has for it.” – well, that’s what morality is for.

Well, even under amoral mathematical principles, the hoarding by the wealthy and the trickle up is bad for the system, so I'd say it was possible to arrive at the conclusion there is a problem even without considering morality.

Government makes money on money moving about. The more it moves, the less government has to take from it moving.

Hoarding and sucking up money to more and more central control reduces the velocity of money and makes government HAVE to charge more apparent tax to pay for the minimum necessary work.

You can go back to Henry Ford to see a non-moral reason to spread wealth.

Even under capitalism, profit is bad: profit above the cost of production is a drain on the free market and demonstrates that there is a market opportunity to reduce the cost of the works.

But profit *used* to be what paid salaries (more especially of the non-productive management and support chain), so profit paid for the work done. Since then, that wage (except for single-owner small business) is part of the cost, not taken from the profit. But the rhetoric of why it was valid continued without acknowledging the change.

Oh, another thing about A, B and C. B may have borrowed a billion based on a wealth of 10 billion. They can then leverage that loan to buy things, AND count the interest off as a tax loss, reducing what they pay on the capital gains, charged at a lower rate than earnings.

More manufactured money based on having money already.

Madness.

#32, I meant morality is what it takes to stop this reality.
Great post. Me, I'm only just taking a bit more serious interest in the system & macromacro-economics.

I've heard rumours they don't teach that at economics class or academia. Or if they do it's labeled communist or something.

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 17 Jul 2015 #permalink

A Taleb-reader btw.

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 17 Jul 2015 #permalink

"I’ve heard rumours they don’t teach that at economics class or academia."

It isn't common for degree courses, since there's a lot of comformity to accept before you're allowed to have a degree in economics.

See Craig and Loth's inability to get past "We have money, you want it, pay to use it" as inerrant moral imperative.

Doctorate level is a bit more open, but the discussion is still very closed and unwelcoming. See the pre-crash economists' attempts to say "This boom isn't going to last!" shut down in the press, then after the crash "Nobody predicted it! It was completely unexpected! Don't blame us!" rhetoric.

Craig @ #21 - minor clarification. Nothing wrong with WWII Germans, per se, any more than WWII other-nations. Such generalisations are disparaged in these enlightened times.

However, Trumps Germans were specifically Waffen-SS, the soldiery accessory to the Nazi party, who made up maybe 10% of German ground forces. On a scale of awfulness, they sit marginally behind the concentration camp guards, but well ahead of the average Wehrmacht soldier, having managed such excellent atrocities as Malmedy and Stavelot in Belgium, Le Paradis and Oradour-sur-Glane in France, Distomo in Greece, and who know what on the Eastern Front. (People with strong stomachs can Greg Hunt those).

Trumps use of that image has a aptness that gets better the deeper you go.

Useful pointer at #36 Turbo.

Drilling down through the links to the Guardian piece by Stiglitz to the blurb on his new book 'Creating a Learning Society: A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress' was interesting.

Having a copy of and read his earlier 'The Price of Inequality' I may well get a copy of that new one.

Another valuable read is described here, The Spirit Level authors: why society is more unequal than ever. Good to see it outsold Jeremy Clarkson (some may admire him but to me he is an opinionated immature), if only for a few weeks.

Wow can't do simple maths:
"You have $100. One month later you have $100.
No loss.
Simple maths.
Even four year olds can manage that."

Yeah, and if they did that maths, they would be wrong.
$100 today is almost never the same thing as $100 one month ago.
The Bank of Melbourne, for example, will pay you $2 if you let them have that $100 for a month, whereas the Arab Bank thinks 1 month of having $100 is only worth 25c:
http://www.canstar.com.au/term-deposits/1k-term-deposit-interest-rate-c…

We know you're not stupid, Wow, but your persistence in your ideologically-led denial of money-reality isn't a great call for you, credibility-wise.

Wow uses denier-style illogic:
"So the owner of a crane should be paid merely for owning a crane?"

Clearly, the owner of the crane and the non-owner who wishes to use it are both agreed that crane *time* has a quantifiable value.
Just as money has, as you can see from the term deposit rates I linked to above.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 20 Jul 2015 #permalink

FrankD - yes. I get that. Hence the reason I switched off Tarantino's execrable WW2 crap movie about 20 minutes in. What shocks me is that so few people I've spoken to had the same reaction to that absolutely appallingly shithouse movie.
And I quite liked Pulp Fiction. And really liked Jackie Brown. And True Romance is possibly my all-time favourite movie. Even Reservoir Dogs was bearable to watch the once.
But Ingloriuos Basterds was a truly abysmal experience, far worse even than the time I was tricked into seeing "Bridges of Madison County" by a female friend who said, "Will you come and see a Clint Eastwood movie with me?".

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 20 Jul 2015 #permalink

Incidentally, when I was in primary school, classmates used to bring in German WW2 steel helmets they'd found in the hills on the weekend/wednesday, the village priest used to regale us with very sobering cautionary tales involving German occupying troops (from which war I never quite figured out - could have been passed down from 1871 for all I know - same Germans, different helmets each time), and Oradour was just as close to the surface of collective memory as the Battle of Britain was on the other side of the channel.
The school I attended to was named after a resistance fighter, the shockingly depraved details of whose fate at the hands of the Gestapo was both something I had to lookup in the library and was far, far too young to be exposed to.

The French weren't interested in figuring out the difference between good Germans and bad ones - they used to just hate them all with a passion, as the war didn't leave them with an over-large stock of victors' generosity to draw on.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 20 Jul 2015 #permalink

"Wow can’t do simple maths:"

Uh huh, right, craig.

100 minus 100 plus 100 equals something other than 100, according to craig. 'cos he says I can't do maths,,,

"The Bank of Melbourne, for example, will pay you $2 if you let them have that $100"

Oh, right, so the proof that interest has to be is that interest exists.

Lothie claims that I was misrepresenting your "arguments" (for want of a better word) by saying that.

Yet still you blather the same bollocks.

Love the hahas and the learning in
this and other open threads.
Thanks to all writers .

Another marker for sea level rise is the plight of the Little Tern on various coastlines where sea level rise is noted from ever increasing spring tides which threaten their nesting sites.

In some locations special measures have been introduced to raise nests up on platforms in an effort to keep them from drowning.

some links:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22Little+tern%22+AND+%22spring+tides…

Bernard J

There has today been a post at Climate Denial Crock of the Week which provides one of the factors behind this and note my mention of Balog in comment 2.

I don't think either of us expected the progress of these processes to be linear.

Wow still can't grasp it: $100 at one time is not the same thing as $100 at a different time.
$100 in 2014 - $100 in 2015 almost always gives a non-zero result. They are two different values.

Same with the crane.
You're a builder.
You've signed a $1,000,000 contract to build a building.
You go to the crane-hire place and ask for a crane for 4 weeks and agree to pay them $25000.
You go to the bank and ask for $500,000 for 6 months so you can buy materials and start paying workers. You agree to pay them $25,000.

That's how money works, Wow, regardless of what your beliefs tell you what "has to be".
Rational people don't care about "has to be" ideology, we care about reality. In the real world, people will share resources according to basic principles of trade, and money is a resource, like any other.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 20 Jul 2015 #permalink

"Wow still can’t grasp it: $100 at one time is not the same thing as $100 at a different time."

Oh, I can grasp the words. They're not proving anything, though.

"You go to the bank and ask for $500,000 for 6 months so you can buy materials and start paying workers. You agree to pay them $25,000."

Yeah. And?

You still aren't showing that there has to be interest on the loan. Nor have you shown that you HAVE to pay the bank 25,000 absent their demand that you do.

Here's a continuation of your story.

I refuse to pay them $25000. Nobody else will pay them $25000 for the $500000 loan and that $500000 sits in the bank unused.

How much is that $500000 worth after 6 months? Why?

Follow up: why then would it be worth paying $25000 for the temporary use of the $500000?

Oh, by the way, if your problem with my statement was related to your response to mine, then my problem wasn't "simple maths", was it.

"$100 today is almost never the same thing as $100 one month ago."
Which is the problem adressed by, among others, Wow.

Actually your statement even means nothing. Actually a $100 bill is merely a piece of paper with no value whatsoever. It is about what it represents.

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 21 Jul 2015 #permalink

"Oh, right, so the proof that interest has to be is that interest exists."
Exactly.

"Rational people don’t care about “has to be” ideology, we care about reality. "
And never shall we change reality. We have to be stuck on the ground because gravity is the realithy and so is the fact that we are not birds, so put the Wright Bros in Guantanamo Bay.

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 21 Jul 2015 #permalink

Lionel A's first links shows the 'bastion' of thicker ice along Ellesmere and Greenland.
This 'bastion' has gone this year, which is again a completely new phenomenon. The thicker and older ice is spread out over the entire ocean, with a conspicuous blob of it against Franz Jozef Archipel ready to transport east and melt away like poof.

By cRR Kampen (not verified) on 21 Jul 2015 #permalink

I have contacted the BBC objecting to the use of misleading headlines again and pointed out that although the article is balanced and nuanced 'the usual suspects' will take the headline and spin it. A search using words in that headline demonstrates some already have.

Dan Taylor at MorningTicker has done just that spinning his own headline:

Arctic ice grows ‘by a third,’ stunning scientists

with the egregious caption under the lead image:

During a cool summer of 2013, the Arctic ice actually grew, giving new ammo to Global Warming skeptics.

which kinda proves my point.

Only very desperate skeptics deniers at that.

And true to form GSW also proves my point.

What a dunce he is.

Note this you fool:

There have been worries about the condition of the Arctic ice cap for some years now: but these may be assuaged somewhat by the fact that the northern ice increased volume by an amazing THIRD in just one year, 2013, and it has added more mass since.

Which is obfuscation running into total fabrication with that lie emphasised.

Yup, deniers are nothing but predictable in their idiocy.

Don't be so miserable Lionel.

"The Beeb was reporting on newly published updated research which has confirmed the Arctic ice's remarkable resurgence over the last couple of years, for all that last year was tied for warmest-ever with 2005 and 2010."

"The Arctic ice has indeed cheered up a bit, particularly in thickness of the key areas north of Greenland and Canada, which had been getting nearly as thin as the stuff north of Siberia - which regularly breaks up enough to let ships through, though they generally have to be escorted by icebreakers. Thus actual ice volumes are looking especially good."

"Arctic ice has also stabilised in area, which is a marked change from much of last decade when the northern sea ice extent over time seemed to be in free fall. (That said the drop was much less than normal seasonal variation, as can be seen in these graphs from Cryosphere Today.)"

"Meanwhile of course, the southern sea ice around Antarctica has continued to spread out and cover bigger areas all the time, a circumstance which has frankly stumped climate scientists as their models cannot account for it. Antarctic ice hit a new all-time record last year, in fact."

"This growth, combined with the recent bounce-back in the Arctic, means that the world's total area of sea ice today is little different to that seen thirty years ago and more, when people first started monitoring it."

Also, according to the authors, the research suggests Arctic sea ice is more resilient than was thought.

Mmm... looks like Thermageddon's on hold.
:)

Looking other "The Register" output, it seems to sided with the sceptics.

"The 'echo chamber' effect misleading people on climate change"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/28/climate_change_echo_chambers/
"Dubious bloggers like DeSmogBlog refuse to accept consensus"

Oh dear, don't you get your misinformation from DeSmogBlog Lionel? If this 'scepticism' continues they'll be cutting subsidies for useless renewable technologies next.
:)

Oh no, it had to happen, subsidies for useless renewable energy technologies are on their way out anyway.

"Britain’s Green Energy Subsidies Face The Axe"
http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=a6518d…

"Green taxes which push up energy bills are to be slashed by the government, MailOnline has learned. A ‘big reset’ of the support given to the renewable industry is expected to be announced within weeks, including cuts to funding for the solar industry."

Which is good news.
:)

What is it with you GSW, did you not understand that I have seen that Register Gish-fart and also that I linked to more recent appraisal of the state of Arctic ice in #52 which you have clearly skipped over again.

Thus that Register article can be seen as just so full of crap, but then that is what you feed on without knowing because you are a moronic Morano follower.

And no, shit for brains, I don't get my climate understanding from DeSmog but hundreds of scientific papers, and reports.

But then you are not here to learn, or have a productive interchange of ideas now are you. You would not know where to start you tart.

And the GWPF, that was old news anyway, are losing influence and displaying wishful thinking, they are as irrelevant to the scientific discourse as The Heartland Institute - their only value being shinning alight on their own desperation and malfeasance and that of their helpers.

GSW

During the last interglacial (Eemian MIS 5e ~130 - 115ka) mean sealevel highstand was >6m above present MSL.

Global average temperature during the peak of the Eemian interglacial was about 1C higher than the present.

This is what happened. So there is little reason to suppose that it will not happen again once temperatures rise another degree or so. And they will, because it's simply physics.

You can deny physics, but you cannot stop it happening.

Thanks BBD,

and, as you're aware, it was all entirely natural and the timescale was ~ thousand(s) of years. So?

Lionel, more 'Denial' from the examiner,

"Arctic Sea Ice grows 33 percent, stunning researchers"
http://www.examiner.com/article/arctic-sea-ice-grows-grows-33-percent-s…

"Compared to the average of the period between 2010 and 2012, a 33 percent increase in sea ice volume was found in 2013 and and in 2014 there was still a quarter more ice than during that period."

"It would suggest that sea ice is more resilient perhaps"

"In 2009, Al Gore predicted the polar ice cap would disappear by 2014".

Yes he did and we all had a good laugh about it at the time.
:)

More 'Denial' Lionel,

"Paper hints arctic sea ice more resilient than thought"
http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/news-stories/article/paper-hints…

"Arctic sea ice may be more resilient than previously thought, according to new research."

"Satellite data reported in a new paper shows that sea ice volumes in the spring months have been stable over the four years from 2010 to 2014 and that Autumn sea ice volumes in 2013 and 2014 were significantly up on prior years"

"Total sea ice volume increased by 41 per cent in the autumn of 2013 compared to the previous year and remained higher than the five-year average through to autumn 2014. This increase was due to the retention of thick, predominantly MYI, north of Greenland and Ellesmere Island over the summer of 2013, according to the research paper. Significantly, 2013 was a relatively cool year, with summer temperatures comparable to those of the late 1990s. “The sharp increase in sea ice volume after just one cool summer suggests that Arctic sea ice may be more resilient than has been previously considered,” the researchers state. "

Ok, I'm convinced.
:)

More 'Denial',

"Increased Arctic sea ice volume after anomalously low melting in 2013"
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2489.html

"Between autumn 2010 and 2012, there was a 14% reduction in Arctic sea ice volume, in keeping with the long-term decline in extent. However, we observe 33% and 25% more ice in autumn 2013 and 2014, respectively, relative to the 2010–2012 seasonal mean, which offset earlier losses. This increase was caused by the retention of thick sea ice northwest of Greenland during 2013 which, in turn, was associated with a 5% drop in the number of days on which melting occurred—conditions more typical of the late 1990s. In contrast, springtime Arctic sea ice volume has remained stable. The sharp increase in sea ice volume after just one cool summer suggests that Arctic sea ice may be more resilient than has been previously considered."

More 'resilient' than was previously considered... Mmm.. why yes, of course it is, that's those on the 'Alarmist 'side of the argument feel the need to write letter(s) of complaint. :)

It's official - The End Of the World is less nigh than we thought!.

Enjoy!
;)

GSW

and, as you’re aware, it was all entirely natural and the timescale was ~ thousand(s) of years. So?

So a natural (orbital) forcing operating over thousands of years eventually caused the breakup of the WAIS and what seems to have been centennial-scale stepwise increases in SLR.

We apply a larger, global anthropogenic forcing across a couple of centuries and the same breakup of the WAIS is arguably the inevitable result.

I don't think you really understand this.

GSW

When Arctic sea ice volume and extent have recovered to levels observed at the beginning of the satellite era, I will be receptive to arguments that something noteworthy has happened.

Interannual variability does not affect the long term trend.

So?

There it is in plain sight, world-class, learned behaviour numptyism.

Achieved by reading extremely selectively from second and third hand sources, and fortified by having absolutely no clue as to the nature and scope of the problem.

Al Gore, ffs?
In 2015 ?
Griselda, still living in the past and still greedily sucking up yankee republkan shyte and spewing it right out.

I do really understand it BBD, it's time scales that's the thing. We've had what 0.8K over last 100yrs and we're SLR ~ 3mm/yr (12inches/century) ?

If the Greenland Ice sheet melted we'd get ~23ft of sea level rise, but best estimates (and I'm thinking that Met Office paper) ~5,000yrs. What does that work out at /Century about 6inches or so?

No matter how hard you try BBD, you're going to struggle to make that 'Alarming'.

It's physics and math BBD, physics and math.
;)

It’s physics and math BBD, physics and math.

Oh, and then make the massive assumption that OF COURSE these processes will occur at predictable, linear rates and thus be entirely manageable.

We may be better off opening negotiations with the termites, rather than ever bother trying to reach out to the Griselda faction.

BBD,

"When Arctic sea ice volume and extent have recovered to levels observed at the beginning of the satellite era"

Why does it have to return to some arbitrary past 'point' for it not to be 'Alarmed'? It's either a problem or it isn't, the fact that's higher or lower than 1980, 1960(?) in itself, who cares?

You truely are logic defying.
;)

chek,

"Al Gore, ffs?
In 2015 ?"

I know, he's a clown isn't he. I wouldn't have mentioned him if he wasn't quoted in the article.

"We’ve had what 0.8K over last 100yrs and we’re SLR ~ 3mm/yr (12inches/century) ?"

I had ice in my glass at -1C. It's now 0.8C warmer and the sun is shining on it...

GSW

The Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) wasn't the principal driver of Eemian SLR jumps. That was the WAIS, as I said above.

The WAIS is a marine ice sheet with a retrograde grounding slope which makes it unstable.

Modern SLR is mainly thermal expansion of seawater. Future SLR will be mainly the gravity-driven (and so unstoppable) drainage of the WAIS and possibly sectors of the EAIS. Just like last time.

GSW

Why does it have to return to some arbitrary past ‘point’ for it not to be ‘Alarmed’? It’s either a problem or it isn’t, the fact that’s higher or lower than 1980, 1960(?) in itself, who cares?

You truely are logic defying.

The logic is self-evident:

What is logic defying about placing more value on the multidecadal trend than on inter-annual variability?

Feel free to demonstrate my logic fail with physics and maths.

"Why does it have to return to some arbitrary past ‘point’ for it not to be ‘Alarmed’?"

What does that mean? And where did you get it from?

You got it there Wow.
Thinking and explanation are way beyond Griselda's pay grade.

“Al Gore, ffs? In 2015 ?”

I know, he’s I'm a clown isn’t he aren't I. I wouldn’t have mentioned him if he wasn’t quoted in the article heap big magic catnip for us deniers.

Corrected that for you, Griselda.

You can't really blame GSW for having the same cognitive scotoma that Bill Cosby displays when he says that he did not sexually assault his victims, or when Bronwyn Bishop thinks that there's nothing wrong with spending tax payers' money fly by helicopter to a Liberal party fundraiser...

After all, GSW's apparent IQ is ~95.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 21 Jul 2015 #permalink

Note how GSW continually gets his information pre-digested from third parties that are denialist blogs or right wing rags. He doesn't do the primary literature - that's way over his pin-sized head - but instead relies on the bile spewed out by the usual suspects.

And he thinks he is on top of these debates. Bernard sums him up well at #78.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 22 Jul 2015 #permalink

"Actually a $100 bill is merely a piece of paper with no value whatsoever. It is about what it represents."

Yeeeeeees.....and "what it represents" varies (usually negatively) over time, therefore money-time has a value of its own, so, if you borrow money from somebody, you owe them for the value of the money-time as well as for the initial money you borrowed, a trade that is recognised and accepted by all rational human beings that I am acquainted with.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 22 Jul 2015 #permalink

Lewis Page is and always was a complete idiot over-confident ex-forces boofhead.

He is unacquainted with the basic principles of research and analysis and over-fond of groundless, baseless, unsupported opinion.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 22 Jul 2015 #permalink

Thankfully a GWPF newsletter roundup,

"Arctic Bounces Back, World Returns To Sea Ice Levels Seen In 1980s"
http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=eabe6c…

"This [Antarctic] growth, combined with the recent bounce-back in the Arctic, means that the world's total area of sea ice today is little different to that seen thirty years ago and more, when people first started monitoring it."

I think that's 'noteworthy'. So much for 'Death Spiral' prophecies. You wouldn't believe how un 'Alarmed' everyone is. Enjoy turds!
;)

Here is Lewis Page's "method", which is essentially the same "method" used by the Spangled Drongo to prove that sea level rise is not happening:

Lewis says,
"Arctic ice EMBIGGENS, returns to 1980s levels of cap cover"

What he's done is look at this:
http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/pub/photos/snow_ice_june2015_digi.jpg

He then draws a line between this year's anomaly (highest positive anomaly in 12 years) so that it (almost) meets 1990's strongly negative anomaly, fudges 1990 to mean "the 80s" and tries to draw a misleading conclusion on the trend.

He then surrounds his crap "analysis" with a mish-mash of jokey sarcasm and entirely fatuous assertions as to what others believe and say and - voila! - yet another profoundly idiotic Register article is born.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 22 Jul 2015 #permalink

...and GSW laps up this crap.

Here's a clue, GSW, if you are genuinely interested in *informing* yourself, you should steer clear of know-nothings like Lewis Page, and unqualified ideologues running lobby-groups like Nigel Lawson, and try using actual facts:

http://psc.apl.uw.edu/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/

Then, maybe ask yourself how the world's volume of non-sea ice is doing, and where that ice is going, and whether - juat maybe - there could be a connection between the two, especially in the light of the Theory of Gravity (unless you think that Theory is also a UN plot designed to usher in a communist-fascist new world-order).

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 22 Jul 2015 #permalink

And, as if on cue, a new piece in the Daily Mail,

"DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Climate change and an inconvenient truth"
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3170198/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-Cl…

"How interesting then, that the latest analysis of 88million measurements from the European Space Agency’s Cryosat satellite show the northern ice-cap INCREASED by a staggering 41 per cent in 2013 and, despite a modest shortage last year, is bigger than at any time for decades."

"But the more they juggle their theories to fit the inconvenient truths, the more the public will question whether these prophesies of global doom are based on genuine science, or guesswork.

"And they will rightly wonder whether solemnly committing to climate change targets while saddling ordinary people with a raft of spurious green taxes serves any real purpose – other than being an expensive exercise in gesture politics."

Indeed.