Monday, February 02, 2015

Curriculum Changes: World Does Not End

Well, it's official. I have not been keeping up the blog. TeachTheFacts.org formed in 2004 to protect our Montgomery County school district from assault by radical conservatives, and largely that assault has been successfully repelled. For a long time there was breaking news nearly every day as a handful of extremists tried to keep any mention of sexual orientation out of the schools. The press loved them but they had zilch in terms of community support. These days we don't hear much from them. And I have not been very diligent about maintaining this blog.

The curriculum was an improvement but it was not what we wanted. For instance, teachers were not allowed to say that homosexuality is not a disease, unless a student specifically asked that question. And, very weird, teachers were not allowed to "teach," they were required to read scripts discussing sexual orientation and correct condom use. Can you imagine being a kid and trying to figure out what is going on? What happened to my teacher, she was a nice lady and now she is reading this stuff to us.

Last summer the school board proposed improvements to the curriculum -- including "descripting" -- and asked for public comment. Their official wording:
WHEREAS, On February 13, 2001, the Montgomery County Board of Education approved a curriculum policy that guides the development, implementation, and monitoring of curricula throughout the school system; and

WHEREAS, A draft curriculum framework was developed for secondary health education; and

WHEREAS, The draft curriculum framework was shared with stakeholders and additional feedback was received during a public comment period from May 13 to June 13, 2014; and

WHEREAS, Feedback and input from stakeholders and public comments have been used to develop and refine the Secondary Comprehensive Health Education Curriculum Framework; now therefore be it

Resolved, That the Montgomery County Board of Education grants final approval of the Montgomery County Public Schools Secondary Comprehensive Health Education Curriculum Framework, which combines National Health Education Standards skills and Montgomery County Public Schools content standards as the foundation for the development of the Secondary Health Education Curriculum. Board Memorandum
The school district got 61 comments, of which 15 were opposed to the changes. They are summarized in the linked memo, along with documentation of the changes. Nobody can complain that this was a "stealth maneuver" or anything, the anti-gay side heard about it -- even Family Research Council monkey-monk Peter Sprigg spewed spoke to the board. None of this made the newspapers at the time, well there is no reason why it would. Extry extry, health class changes! Read all about it!

Mostly people were supportive, even enthusiastic about the changes. It is kind of fun to read. Even the "aberrant sexual behaviors" comments are colorful and folksy, in their way.

The June 2014 memo says:
In the 2014–2015 school year, MCPS will implement the shift away from scripted lessons on sexual orientation and proper use of a condom. In the 2015–2016 school year, updated courses in Grades 6, 7, and 8 will be implemented. The implementation of the updated high school course will begin in the 2016–2017 school year. Each school will continue to provide parents with the opportunity to review the Family Life and Human Sexuality and Disease Prevention and Control curriculum and resources, and parents will be permitted to decide whether their children will participate in these units.
Sometimes it seems embarrassing when people are afraid to do what's right. When this curriculum was being developed, everyone knew what needed to be done but they were afraid of bad publicity. There might have been as many as a dozen active members in the group opposed to any mention of sexual orientation and condom use, in a county of a million residents. Still, the school district went to extreme lengths to listen to them, to humor them as they ranted about anal sex and every other thing, and in the end they weakened the curriculum to accommodate the hateful views of a radical minority. There are lots of important reasons to inform our young citizens about sexual orientation and gender identity, to teach them how to use a condom correctly, and it is important not to undermine the lessons with pedagogical techniques that imply that the subject is shameful or even controversial.

At the time, we hoped that the small victory would open the door for progress, and it did.

202 Comments:

Anonymous a teller of inconvenient truths said...

the first 15 years of the 21st century have basically been sundown on the theory of anthropogenic climate change

so desperate have the alarmists become that they are now flat-out lying

just a coupla weeks ago, they were screaming that 2014 was THE HOTTEST YEAR EVER!!!

this is a lie

the climate has not changed since the late 1990s and 2014 is statistically identical to several other years in the 21st century

given the margin of error in the very imprecise science of climatology, it's hard to say which year in the 21st century is hottest because they've all been about the same

an inconvenient truth if you are fanatically dedicated to alarmism because carbon emissions have risen steadily during this time

I think it's time for alarmists to apologize for the lies

that's right

apologize for the lies

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/01/29/global-temperature-what-does-that-even-mean/YBuZQuXqAB5dJYznrRyVKI/story.html




February 02, 2015 4:24 PM  
Anonymous nattering nabob of narcissism said...

looks like it's sundown on the socialist Obama years

Scott Walker, who has kicked the ass of liberals in liberal Wisconsin three times in the last four years is taking the beat-down national

and he's winning!!

bye-bye gay agenda

you're goin' down in flames!!



http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/scott-walker-2016-elections-114808.html

February 02, 2015 4:51 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Three seperate global temperature data sets have confirmed 2014 is the hottest year ever recorded - data from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and by the Japan Meteorological Agency.

"A record warm year, especially absent (the warming effects of) a strong El Niño, is mostly a reminder that the long-term trend for Earth's temperature is up, up, up," said Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton University climate scientist. The planet has not seen a month with below-average temperatures since February 1985. 9 of the hottest 10 years ever recorded have occurred since 2002 with 2005 and 2010 being the second and third hottest years on record.

The global warming deniers/liars like to point to cooler than normal temperatures in the eastern U.S. and pretend this shows the planet is cooling, but the U.S. accounts for less than 2% of the entire planet's surface and as you can see in this graph of global temperatures while the eastern U.S. has been cooler than normal the vast majority of the planet is hotter than normal - note how little of the planet is coloured blue (cooler than normal).

The linear regression lines for average global yearly temperatures since 1880 show the temperature trend has been upwards since record keeping began

The last time the planet saw a cooler than average year was 1976.

February 02, 2015 6:24 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

This video from Climate Central does a great job of putting into perspective how rare this hot streak is. The odds of 13 of the 15 hottest years on record occurring since the year 2000 without the assistance of greenhouse gas-induced global warming are 1 in 27 million.

Our Hottest Year, Our Cold Indifference

Perhaps at some future date it will be seen as a stroke of particular bad luck for the planet that the Eastern United States was one of the few parts of the world that wasn’t unnaturally hot in 2014—the site of “a temperature anomaly,” as NASA put it. The East Coast is where Congress and the main financial markets are, and so anything that contributes to climate-change denial has a systemic toxicity. But that would be a fairy tale, one which assumes that all politicians and businesses were waiting for was first-hand evidence, and that, if the evidence appeared—if they opened their windows and remarked on the unseasonably warm weather—they would have quickly acted.

The new numbers are so striking that they surprised even climate scientists; 2014 was, in science parlance, “an El Niño neutral year.” El Niño is one of those “natural” forces that climate deniers say can account for fluctuations and for warming the ocean up; a reply might be that man-made climate-change may come to affect even the oceans’ currents. (It already appears to have affected their level of acidification; add to that a new report warning of impending mass oceanic extinctions.) But that point doesn’t even need to be made. This past year was hot without any room for disingenuous excuses. The planet is changing, and we are close to the time when trying to check climate change will be like trying to redirect El Niño with canoe paddles.

February 02, 2015 6:25 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Do we want to pretend that the problem is one of mere abstract numbers—scientific data, spreadsheets? At this point, we are hardly lacking in shimmering photo essays of melting glaciers, or of stories about tourists arriving in New Zealand or Switzerland and not finding the walls of ice they’d been led to expect. We are overwhelmed with anecdotes and uncanny scenes of habitat destruction. (Read Elizabeth Kolbert’s book.) But, even without the pictures and stories, there are some useful, and frightening, ways to visualize those figures, and few honest ways to look at them and say one doesn’t understand. NASA has a set of color-coded maps—one can see the East Coast’s lonely coolness anomaly, joined only by one in part of Antarctica—and the Times has a version supplemented with historical data. Bloomberg has put together a striking animation of the jagged lines of average temperatures rising in the course of the past hundred and thirty-four years, like the water stains on an seawall.

February 02, 2015 6:25 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The Defeat of Climate Denialists

An overwhelming majority of the American public, including half of Republicans, support government action to curb global warming, according to a poll conducted by The New York Times, Stanford University and the nonpartisan environmental research group Resources for the Future. In a finding that could have implications for the 2016 presidential campaign, the poll also found that two-thirds of Americans said they were more likely to vote for political candidates who campaign on fighting climate change. They were less likely to vote for candidates who questioned or denied the science that determined that humans caused global warming.

February 02, 2015 6:32 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

It is quite simply a desperate lie that there has been no global warming since the late 1990s.

And that's just the atmospheric warming.
The global warming in the oceans is far more dramatic and will in the near future greatly accelerate the atmospheric warming we've seen.


13 of the 14th hottest years on record have been in the 21st century but the atmosphere represents only 2% of the global climate and the oceans have warmed up much more dramatically than the atmosphere.

February 02, 2015 6:42 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

13 of the 14 hottest years on record have all occurred in the 21st century.

February 02, 2015 6:48 PM  
Anonymous just say you're sorry said...

"Three seperate global temperature data sets have confirmed 2014 is the hottest year ever recorded - data from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and by the Japan Meteorological Agency"

post seven straight comments

delete one

classic emotional instability

always thinking you should have something else and then throwing in more, or deleting

Priya hasn't really read the NASA report

if so, Priya would have noticed that NASA said that there is a 48% chance that 2014 was the hottest year on record

that means that, odds are (52%), it wasn't the hottest year ever

it matters little though

the reason there is such uncertainty is that all the years of the 21st century have had about the same global temperature

this despite the FACT that the citizens of the globe have continued to pour carbon into the atmosphere at an accelerating pace

everyone except the U.S., that is, which has reduced its output

oh, the global stability denialists will say all the years of the 21st century have been hot

yes, but they fail to point out the FACT that the increase has stopped

THE CESSATION OF GLOBAL WARMING IS A FACT!!

and, yet, all the catastrophic predictions are based on an increase in temperature

NASA says there is a 52% chance that 2014 is not the warmest year ever

I should know

I own NASA

as a U.S. taxpayer, I have an equity stake

but the global stability denialists keep ranting

and the steps they are proposing to avert the imaginary coming catastrophe are to hinder that human activity that has led to reducing deaths from natural disasters by 90% since 1900

the global stability denialists are dangerous liars trying to thwart life-saving progress

they owe us all an apology

NOW!!

February 02, 2015 7:34 PM  
Anonymous so psyched to watch the gay agenda go down in flames said...

"When this curriculum was being developed, everyone knew what needed to be done but they were afraid of bad publicity. There might have been as many as a dozen active members in the group opposed to any mention of sexual orientation and condom use, in a county of a million residents. Sometimes it seems embarrassing when people are afraid to do what's right."

Embarrassing when people make statements without thinking.

Why would they be afraid of 12 people out of a million?

Likely because they knew the 12 were right and could be proven so if reasoned discussion were allowed.

That's why the entire curriculum had to be thrown out when it was found unconstitutional rather than just removing the offending parts.

That's why referendums are always blocked by gay activists.

It's the real reason why the curriculum hasn't allowed discussion.

The curriculum will be valuable when it allows a presentation of facts without value judgements about the history of homosexuality, the current views of homosexuality in major cultures and religions, and the prevalence of certain diseases in the homosexual community.

example:

the original curriculum, formulated by the notorious Fishback Commission, asserted that Baptists were bigots because they thought homosexuality is sinful

for a governmental entity to teach such a value judgement about a religious denomination is obviously unconstitutional

but MCPS could have easily remedied this by simply stating that Baptists think homosexuality is sinful, without making a judgement concerning the beliefs of Baptists

but they didn't

why?

they can't bear to teach the facts about Baptists

better to start over and pretend that the views of Baptists, which coincide with the views of most people, don't exist

in other words, the curriculum is a fairy tale

most people in history and the current world, consider homosexuality to be immoral

certain invariably fatal diseases are much more prevalent in homosexuals

two facts you wouldn't learn from the worthless MCPS curriculum

February 02, 2015 8:48 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

No, anon, the original "Fishback" curriculum did not assert that Baptists were bigots.

February 02, 2015 9:37 PM  
Anonymous this oughta be good said...

really?

explain why it was stopped by the judiciary and abandoned by MCPS

February 02, 2015 10:39 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

There were three "background materials" that had mention of religion. These were not to be used in class and were not even to be given to teachers, they were links to stuff on the web. One of the documents noted that some religions think homosexuality is a sin, and one of them mentioned religious groups that are welcoming to LGBT people. None called anyone a bigot.

February 02, 2015 10:51 PM  
Anonymous lewd dude said...

the material was background resources FOR TEACHERS TO DEVELOP THEIR LESSON PLANS

the material asked whether homosexuality was a sin and then stated that the Baptist church used religion to "justify hatred and oppression" and contrasted it to Quakers and Unitarians who "fortunately had began to address the homophobia of the church"

I realize this reflect the view of many of the Mother Earth worshippers of MC but the constitution forbids the government taking sides on religious belief

February 03, 2015 7:34 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

explain why it was stopped by the judiciary and abandoned by MCPS

It was stopped because in 2005, Judge Williams thought the CRC *might* have an actionable claim. What did CRC do? They took $36,000 from MCPS's budget and lowered community participation on the Advisory Committee on Family Life and Human Development from 27 seats to 15 in the effort to increase voting power of people sharing their discriminatory view. That's all their 2005 lawsuit won them.

CRC/PFOX have lost every other case they brought into a courtroom ever since 2005 because discrimination against teaching the fact that LGBT folks exist continues to be wrong.

As time has progressed, the CRC/PFOX discriminatory view has lost even more support.

The curriculum David Fishback's committee wrote was so much tamer than the curriculum MCPS ended up with thanks to CRC/PFOX's initial lawsuit. The CRC would have been better off with Fishback's curriculum as there were no vignettes humanizing people of minority sexual orientations.

Peter Sprigg and Ruth Jacobs tried to remove those vignettes at more than one Advisory Committee for Family Life and Human Development meeting, but they were always the minority vote and they lost every time.

February 03, 2015 8:20 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

A brochure that reports facts about Baptists and Quakers is not taking sides that one religion is better than the other.

February 03, 2015 8:24 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"As time has progressed, the CRC/PFOX discriminatory view has lost even more support."

That's right!

In 2005 only a handful of states allowed same-sex marriage. Today more states allow same-sex marriage than deny it and in 2013, Section 3 of DOMA was found to be unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court.

“DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment.”

"DOMA’s history of enactment and its own text demonstrate that interference with the equal dignity of same-sex marriages, conferred by the States in the exercise of their sovereign power, was more than an incidental effect of the federal statute… DOMA’s principal effect is to identify and make unequal a subset of state-sanctioned marriages."

February 03, 2015 8:33 AM  
Anonymous baby, I'm a firework said...

"It was stopped because in 2005, Judge Williams thought the CRC *might* have an actionable claim"

no, it was stopped because they did have an actionable claim and the judge thought it more than likely they would prevail

you didn't answer why MCPS didn't merely amend or delete the offending sections but instead threw out the whole curriculum

it was because they don't want discussion and want to control thought and speech

they couldn't do that in a courtroom but could if they set up another committee

abandoning the curriculum was the only way to do that

"What did CRC do? They took $36,000 from MCPS's budget"

you mean to settle the lawsuit?

MCPS is sued on a regular basis

why is that you only object to those sue for a responsible curriculum?

MCPS is currently considering spending 10 million to delay the starting time for high school by 20 minutes

I support that change but it shows what a pittance you're discussing

basically irresponsible rhetoric

"discrimination against teaching the fact that LGBT folks exist continues to be wrong"

seriously?

do you really think they was ever a high school student who wasn't aware that "LGBT folks exist"?

the curriculum isn't there to bring this awareness to students

it is there to convey the patina of normalcy to homosexuality

what is and isn't normal, proper and right is not the appropriate realm of public schools

"The CRC would have been better off with Fishback's curriculum as there were no vignettes humanizing people of minority sexual orientations"

your concern for the welfare of the CRC is touching

"A brochure that reports facts about Baptists and Quakers is not taking sides that one religion is better than the other"

characterizing the views of certain religious groups as "hatred", "oppression" and "homophobia" is opinion, not fact

"In 2005 only a handful of states allowed same-sex marriage. Today more states allow same-sex marriage than deny it"

non-diverse "marriage" was imposed on most of these states

very few electorates have approved it

and when the SCOTUS rules that same gender "marriage" is not a constitutional right, marriage will again be a gendered institution in most states

February 03, 2015 9:24 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"no, it was stopped because they did have an actionable claim and the judge thought it more than likely they would prevail"

Judge Williams' opinion was wrong.

CRC/PFOX never "prevailed" in court after Judge Williams' incorrect opinion was issued in 2005.

February 03, 2015 10:01 AM  
Anonymous dude-i-tude said...

he was right

as attested to by the fact that MCPS dropped the curriculum and settled and started over

February 03, 2015 10:30 AM  
Anonymous lickin' licious said...

remember how, after Sir Barry cheated his way to re-election by using the IRS to harass his opponents, everyone said Republicans were doomed to go the way of the Whigs because of all the Hispanics who voted against them?

seems a little silly now

here's some discussion:

http://hotair.com/archives/2015/02/02/john-judis-about-that-emerging-democratic-majority-thing-yeah/

February 03, 2015 10:42 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

One document said "religion has often been misused to justify hatred and oppression." Are you saying that is not true?

February 03, 2015 10:43 AM  
Anonymous my blue-eyed one said...

not if you remove it from context

the context implies that it only applies to certain religions and cites the Baptist church as an example

truth is, mankind has a nasty streak and will always contain bad elements that will manipulate whatever the prevailing dogma is

if we would deal in fact, we'd have to recognize that when the dogma is militant atheism the bad elements are rarely restrained

think Stalin and Mao, the two greatest mass murderers of all time

they did it because of what they believed in

the Judeo-Christian world on the other hand has restrained the bad and has developed into the tolerant societies we see today

but evaluating the worth of different faiths, such as atheism, is not the place of a government-run school

Are you saying that is not true?

February 03, 2015 11:06 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

If Wyatt/bad anonymous had a brain he'd be down on the floor playing with it.

February 03, 2015 11:09 AM  
Anonymous lewd-i-tude said...

just think if nasty Priya were able to impose the nasty Priya belief system like Mao and Stalin did

fortunately, Priya is a stupid, worthless, incapable couch potato from Saskatchewan, leeching support off others

February 03, 2015 11:17 AM  
Anonymous Clintons as scared as the gay agenda said...

Martin Scorcese is making a Bill Clinton movie and the Clintons are making major Machiavellian moves in an attempt to stop him

why?

here's the director's opinion:

“Here’s the thing, you know, the thing is, they are terrified about losing. Absolutely terrified. Her book went nowhere, she can’t fill a room unless she’s talking to Goldman Sachs, they are yesterday’s news and they are so obsessed with projecting an aura of inevitability they won’t allow any message to go out that they haven’t already pre-approved and, you know, groped."

February 03, 2015 11:54 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The one (broken) chart that proves global warming hasn't paused

2014 was the hottest year on record -- but that's not even the scariest part.

Air temperatures for 2014 may have made headlines for being the hottest ever recorded, but it turns out that ocean temperatures did them one better: they actually broke the charts.

Specifically, they broke this chart, which NOAA updates every few months, and which needed to be rescaled (see the earlier version, above); the new, roomier version is now live at NOAA’s National Ocean Data Center:

This is a big deal, and not because scientists had to redo a chart. As the Guardian’s John Abraham explains, talking about surface temperatures isn’t the same as talking about global warming — the latter refers to the total amount of heat within Earth’s energy system. And most of that heat — more than 90 percent of it — goes into the oceans.

In other words, charts like this, which show the rapid rise of ocean temperatures, are one of the best visualizations we have for what global warming looks like. The full story takes atmosphere and land temperatures into account, too, and together, Abraham writes, it means that “We can now say that the 2014 Earth had more heat (thermal energy) than any year ever recorded by humans.”

This is the chart that should have you seriously frightened about the very real impact that human activity is having on Earth’s temperature — especially if you consider scientists’ warnings of what will happen once all that stored heat is released back into the atmosphere. It’s also a chart that you can throw in the face of anyone who tries to argue that global warming has “paused,” (conservative media is just making stuff up about global warming) because there’s no denying a trend this strong.

February 03, 2015 11:57 AM  
Anonymous I wonder when Priya's next shock treatment is scheduled said...

so, lazy Priya (LP) now posts the usual link to alarmist articles

I clicked on one: about what's going to happen when the oceans release all the heat they've stored up

interesting that the author says repeatedly that both land and sea surface temperature rises have slowed during the last 15 years

further, the article includes a graph showing that air temperatures are less than at the beginning of the century

again, not by a lot

but still, not rising as predicted by alarmists

then, another of the analyses that the alarmists keep posting which are discredited because they decided before even considering the evidence what conclusion they wanted

oh, the latest: the strong trade winds in the Pacific shift every 20-30 years and that's when the temperatures will go up

that's a relief!

Al Gore has 5-10 more years before he has to get the rockets finished to save his family from a dying planet

face it, people

we, and I mean our best scientists, have no idea what's happening with the climate nor what's causing it

but the current global stability is encouraging

let's not let the nuts start trying to tinker with the atmosphere like Dr Frankenstein

February 03, 2015 12:44 PM  
Anonymous blast off said...

that's right

rockets

February 03, 2015 12:47 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

LOL, I love Wyatt/bad anonymous's playing the black Knight from Monty Python - "It's just a flesh wound."!

February 03, 2015 1:27 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

For those who haven't seen it.

February 03, 2015 1:29 PM  
Anonymous hope we don't get sick said...

well, kids

it's been five years since Obamacare was enacted by Democratic chicanery

at the time, Nancy Pelosi said she realized Americans didn't favor it but said they would once they find out what's in it

since then, the Democratic Party has been wiped out

Republicans have control of governorships, state legislatures, the House of Reps, the Senate by historically large margins

as they now control the drawing of legislative districts, this is unlikely to change in this generation

all because of Obamacare

the only reason the Repubs lost the presidential election in 2012 is because they stupidly nominated the guy who came up with the idea for Obamacare

so...when are Americans going to realize how wonderful Obamacare is?

most recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll on Obamacare shows that 40 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the law, while 46 percent have an unfavorable opinion

most Americans have disapproved of Obamacare since the day it was passed

problem is Sir Barry promised his healthcare plan would benefit everybody and it doesn't

the government subsidizes the health insurance of some while making it more expensive for others with higher premiums, higher deductibles, and narrower choices of doctors

most know they are getting a bad deal

the only Americans who like Obamacare are those who make less than $40,000 a year — and even they aren't all that jazzed

forty-two percent of Americans in that income range have a favorable opinion, while 38 percent have an unfavorable one

among those making between $40,000 and $90,000, hardly wealthy, 57 percent have an unfavorable opinion of the law, while 33 percent like it

how about this question from Kaiser: "Are you tired of hearing about the debate over the healthcare law and think the country should focus more on other issues or do you think it is important for the country to continue the debate over the healthcare law."

fifty percent want the debate to continue, while 45 percent are tired of it

the debate will go on in 2016, and not in the Democrats' favor

February 03, 2015 1:47 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Check it out for yourself folks. The graph most certainly shows higher temperatures since the beginning of the century and it doesn't include 2013 or the all time record hottest year of 2014.

And as for the author saying land and sea surface temperature rises have slowed, he was referring to the atmospheric temperature rises at land and sea level, not the temperatures of the oceans themselves - the oceans are burning up. And the author says the rate of atmospheric temperature increase has slowed, not that the temperature increase has stopped as bad anonymous dishonestly claims.

As the author says in summation "The amount of energy being trapped on Earth continues to rise at a quickening pace.".

February 03, 2015 1:49 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

And as far as Obamacare goes, well over 80% of people who have gotten Obamacare are happy with it. Wyatt/bad anonymous quotes poll numbers from the general public most of whom have no experience with Obamacare and so have bought into the lies Republicans have spread with the flood of money from anti-american conservatives.

When people understand what Obamacare actually does and is they overwhelmingly support it.

And Obama's poll numbers have been on the rise since Republicans took over the senate and he stopped trying to compromise with them while they just blocked everything he attempted and he started just acting without them. The American public loves it when Obama sidesteps the Republicans and implements his policies through executive actions.

February 03, 2015 1:58 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I love goading Wyatt/bad anonymous into wasting his work day posting on the internet!

February 03, 2015 1:59 PM  
Anonymous No glaciers to melt in Florida... said...

Climate change, melting glaciers make Iceland spring upward like a trampoline

"Sea levels aren’t the only things rising due to climate change — swaths of land are too, including the nation of Iceland.

That’s according to a new study published by a team of geologists from the University of Arizona. According to their research, the melting of Iceland’s glaciers has reduced pressure on the ground beneath them, causing the land to “rebound” from the Earth’s crust.

The notion that rock rebounds is not a new one, Sigrun Hreinsdottir, one of the principal investigators on the project, explained to The Washington Post. Land in Canada and Scandinavia is still slowly rising after being pushed down by glaciers during the last ice age. More recently, there are indications parts of Alaska and Chile are also experiencing a “rebound” phenomenon as glaciers retreat. But if those rocks are like a memory foam mattress, remaining compressed long after the pressure on them is gone, the rising land in Iceland is like a trampoline, springing back at a rate of nearly 1.4 inches per year.

“Iceland’s crust is showing the current response,” Hreinsdottir said. “It’s hard to find a more ideal place to study this.”

Hreinsdottir and her colleagues identified this change by examining 20 years of GPS data from more than five dozen points around the country. The height changes they identified, which are concentrated in central Iceland, correlate almost perfectly with the loss of ice documented by glaciologists, Hreinsdottir said. As Iceland’s glaciers continue to melt — the island loses about 11 billion tons of ice per year — the already-rapid rebounding process will accelerate. Relieved of their frozen burden, parts of the country could rise as fast as 1.6 inches per year by 2025 — growing at nearly the same rate as an elementary schooler.

This height change isn’t noticeable to the average human observer, but its consequences will be. Iceland sits atop one of the world’s most active volcanic hot spots, roiling with molten magma. The pressure reductions caused by the melting glaciers and rising land could create conditions that would cause mantle rocks to melt, further feeding Iceland’s already well-supplied volcanoes. Bárðarbunga, a volcano in the center of the island, has been spewing lava uninterrupted since August.

Hreinsdottir said the geological record from the end of the last ice age indicates Iceland saw an increase in volcanic activity after glaciers retreated. And the past five years have been packed with “interesting volcanic activity,” including Bárðarbunga and the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, which is reported to have cost the global economy $5 billion.

“You can’t make any statistics from those few data points of course, but you do notice there might be a connection with the uplift,” Hreinsdottir said. “And our data does indicate that might be exactly what’s happening.”"

February 03, 2015 2:03 PM  
Anonymous vroooom said...

"as for the author saying land and sea surface temperature rises have slowed, he was referring to the atmospheric temperature rises at land and sea level, not the temperatures of the oceans themselves - the oceans are burning up"

ah, not long ago lazy Priya was saying the air temperatures doesn't matter

it was the land temperature

now, suddenly, LP's assertion is that it doesn't matter about the air, the land temperature, or even the sea surface

but deep down in the oceans, where mermaids meander and Aquaman protects the weak sea creatures and Atlantis bustles, things are really heating up

soon, we'll move on to the Earth's core

easy to see without looking too hard, climate alarmism has become a joke

"And as far as Obamacare goes, well over 80% of people who have gotten Obamacare are happy with it"

not surprising since Obie is raising prices, lowering quality and reducing choices for everyone else to paid for their subsidy

and according to Kaiser, even those people only favor it 42-38%

sheeeezz, Obama can't give the stuff away

"poll numbers from the general public most of whom have no experience with Obamacare and so have bought into the lies Republicans have spread with the flood of money from anti-american conservatives"

well gee, if Obama would stop delaying implementation, after five years, maybe they would have a right to an opinion, according to the Canadian nobody

but Obama keeps delaying because he knows that will reduce approval any further

"When people understand what Obamacare actually does and is they overwhelmingly support it"

really?

tell us what they don't know

"And Obama's poll numbers have been on the rise since Republicans took over the senate and he stopped trying to compromise with them while they just blocked everything he attempted and he started just acting without them. The American public loves it when Obama sidesteps the Republicans and implements his policies through executive actions."

actually, Obama never was much for negotiation and skillful compromise

his stock rise a little because people are not paying much attention after elections

Obama will leave in less than two years

the world will be a dangerous place with ISIS, Iran, North Korea, and Russia unchecked

the gap between rich and poor will be historically high

our country will have fewer options because of the extra debt he has racked up

the IRS, the Secret Service, the CDC...no branch of government will be competent

and health care will be rationed by a death panel

all thanks to the time we elected a Muslim socialist born in Kenya as President

February 03, 2015 3:14 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Why pick one conspiracy theory when you can wallow in a bunch of them?

But you forgot Benghazi, the IRS scandal, and No-Go Zones controlled by "Moslems" in France and England, among others!!

Oops!

Whatever you do, do NOT talk about GOP Representative Andrew Schock's new Downton Abby themed office!

Shhhh!

February 03, 2015 4:20 PM  
Anonymous dang me, they oughta hang me said...

you've probably heard that Sir Barry has created a miracle

unemployment has dropped to 5.6%

oh rapturous joy!!

it's a lie

here, the Gallup organization explains why:

http://www.gallup.com/opinion/chairman/181469/big-lie-unemployment.aspx

February 03, 2015 4:22 PM  
Anonymous AAA said...

Dude,

They've been measuring the unemployment rate this way for decades. Even during republican administrations. It isn't a big secret, and it certainly isn't a "big lie" the way the naive and incredulous author claims. It simply limits the usefulness of this measure. If you didn't already know this, you haven't been paying attention.

So much for the conspiracy theory.

February 04, 2015 9:25 AM  
Anonymous all the lewd dudes said...

triple-A

you do have some point. this has always been measured this way. problem is the discouraged worker element has never been this significant. the lie, not a full-blown conspiracy, just the lie, is that Obama has performed some wondrous feat on the economy. the unemployment rate is not currently a valid indicator of economic health because Obama has created a unique situation of a large discouraged worker population and a vastly increased income inequality gap because he hasn't followed policies creating economic opportunities.

he is now threatening to exacerbate the problem by proposing new taxes on investment

the most basic economic principle that all can agree on is: if you tax something, you get less of it

Obama wants to increase the taxes on investment

because, he says, the economy is so healthy now

that's a lie, it isn't healthy now

February 04, 2015 10:00 AM  
Anonymous Dems down the drain said...

good news

the House of Republicans has repealed Obamacare

and so will the Senate

and any Dem who wants to be re-elected will vote to override the veto

and how many people think there won't be a few Dems who want to be re-elected?

February 04, 2015 10:27 AM  
Anonymous AAA said...

"the most basic economic principle that all can agree on is: if you tax something, you get less of it"

I must say, you make the most compelling arguement for taxing churches I have ever heard.

The biggest lie though is that supply-side economics works over the long term. Sure, it looks GREAT in the short term - the 1990s and 1920s are wonderful examples of that.

But both of those periods were followed by epic crashes. The basic underlying problem is that when the rich get too much money, there is no way for them to distinguish between "investing" and "gambling."

When you invest your resoures careful, you'll see a slow but steady return; nothing exciting, and you won't get rich quick, but it can be real, legitimate growth.

When all the rich people are gambling, the tulip bulb (telecom, dot.com, commodities, credit dafault swap) "investments" look like the market nobody can afford to miss, until of course, the market crashes, and you realize that it wasn't real at all and it's just a bunch of guys on Wall Street hyping the latest "sure thing."

Are taxes are still at historically low levels, despite Obama. Companies aren't "investing" and "creating new jobs" (like the plutocrats always claim) for a couple of simple reasons - and it's not the tax code.

The fact is that there is very little demand. The 99% in this country are mostly broke. They have no free cash to spend or companies to chase after. The 1%, despite their great wealth, aren't buying enough goods and services to make up for the losses of the middle class, and they never will.

Corporations could easily fix this problem by hiring more people and paying them better wages - their profits have been increasing throught the Obama administration. Instead, when one reads the trade rags, you find they are investing instead in computer and robotic harware. Creating fewer jobs and more profits for themselves. Corporations don't invest to create jobs, they invest to create more profit. They simply won't create more jobs until they see a lack of employees is leaving money on the table.

Until workers have more money to spend, that isn't going to happen.

Ike got the economy going with taxes as high as 90% - LOTS of people were employed building the national highway system we now take for granted, and is an important part of our nation's productivity, and also building lots of houses for all those vets.

In a few years, we may not even need bus or taxi drivers as self-driving vehicles take away even more jobs. Our economy will continue to falter until we address low wages, the wealth gap, and the ever increasing speed of job replacement by machines.

No party has put forward a cogent plan to fix these issues, but the republicans plan on doing the same old thing and expecting different results.

February 04, 2015 10:59 AM  
Anonymous the cresting wave said...

triple-A

you are obviously more intelligent and thoughtful than the average TTFer

a couple of thoughts about what you said:

"Ike got the economy going with taxes as high as 90% - LOTS of people were employed"

you have to realize how unique the circumstances were in the fifteen years following WWII

the U.S. was the one major economic power whose economic capacity and infrastructure weren't obliterated

we had the task of basically rebuilding the world so there was a lot of work

by the early 60s, JFK had to reduce capital gains taxes to save the economy

by the early seventies, the high marginal rates were dragging down the country

this was ended by Ronald Reagan and the country enjoyed close to full employment for the next 25 years until voters got mad at George Bush over his mismanagement of the Iraq war and turned Congress over to mischievous Democrats

two years later, the economy collapsed

"Corporations could easily fix this problem by hiring more people and paying them better wages - their profits have been increasing throught the Obama administration. Instead, when one reads the trade rags, you find they are investing instead in computer and robotic harware. Creating fewer jobs and more profits for themselves. Corporations don't invest to create jobs, they invest to create more profit. They simply won't create more jobs until they see a lack of employees is leaving money on the table.

Until workers have more money to spend, that isn't going to happen."

well, this is mostly true but Obama has tried government intervention with disastrous results

the answer is not taxes or government spending but working with business and asking how we can help

Bob Dylan, as learned in economics as you and I, recently gave an interview to AARP magazine stating the problem well:

"The government’s not going to create jobs. It doesn’t have to. People have to create jobs, and these big billionaires are the ones who can do it We don’t see that happening. We see crime and inner cities exploding with people who have nothing to do, turning to drink and drugs. They could all have work created for them by all these hotshot billionaires. For sure that would create lot of happiness. Now, I’m not saying they have to — I’m not talking about communism — but what do they do with their money? Do they use it in virtuous ways?

I think they should, yeah, because there are a lot of things that are wrong in America, and especially in the inner cities, that they could solve. Those are dangerous grounds, and they don’t have to be. There are good people there, but they’ve been oppressed by lack of work. Those people can all be working at something. These multibillionaires can create industries right here in America. But no one can tell them what to do. God’s got to lead them."

what do you think, triple-A?

February 04, 2015 11:46 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Evangelists want Christians to emulate Hitler and Stalin

Burt Ferias, founder of something called Holy Fire Ministries, has a column in Charisma News calling for Christians to become extremists and follow in the footsteps of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin by using kids to push their totalitarian agenda.


“In 1933 Hitler said, “If I can separate the youth of Germany from their parents I will conquer this nation.” He started a movement called “The Brown Shirts” in which 100,000 youth stood in Berlin with their right hand raised and screaming. “Hitler, we are yours!” Imagine our youth pledging that kind of allegiance to King Jesus!

It is rumored that, around that same time period, the Communist leader Joseph Stalin made the following statement concerning youth: “If we can effectively kill the national pride and patriotism of just one generation, we will have won that country. Therefore, there must be continued propaganda abroad to undermine the loyalty of the citizens in general and the teenagers in particular. By making readily available drugs of various kinds, by giving a teenager alcohol, by praising his wildness, by strangling him with sex literature and by advertising to his and her psycho-political preparation, create the necessary attitude of chaos, idleness and worthlessness.” If demonically inspired men can affect our youth this way, imagine what divine inspiration will do!

Sin has wasted our youth. We’ve not given them something worthy to live for, and something worthy to die for. To do anything below what they were created to do will bore them. That is the reason many of our young people turn to drugs, alcohol, immorality and other sensual thrills. That is why they need to be awakened to their ultimate purpose in Jesus Christ.

In revolutionary countries youth are trained in combat and weapons. They are taught principles of Communism and the tenets of militant Islam. They give themselves wholeheartedly to the goal of world domination. Someone once said that Satan is preparing his army, but the church is entertaining her children. We need a radical departure from the standard method of training young men and women for ministry. We need a touch of wholesome extremism to launch a counterculture JESUS revolution!"

Yeah, that’s not too creepy or anything.

February 04, 2015 12:07 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Soon enough, same-sex couples will be able to marry in Alabama. In AL-A-BAMA:

Today, February 3, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals denied Alabama's request to extend the stay in a federal judge's ruling in favor of the freedom to marry, meaning that same-sex couples should be able to marry on February 9.
11th Circuit will not delay the freedom to marry in Alabama [Freedom To Marry]

Another pretty good indicator that we've won this thing. And even better indicator will be a month or so in when you hear barely a peep from anyone in this extremely red state who really cares all that much or has been negatively affected by the newfound freedom.

Currently there are:

* 1 District of Columbia (Washington) with marriage equality
* 36 states with full marriage equality
* 2 states in which some counties offer marriage equality
* 4 states in which pro-equality rulings are on stay
* 3 states without a ruling
* 1 state in which the marriage ban was upheld by a federal judge
* 4 states in which the ban was upheld at circuit court level (to be heard by SCOTUS)

LOL! - "The gay agenda is going down in flames! Flames I tell ya!"

Hahahahahahahaha!

LOL!

February 04, 2015 12:21 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Next phase in the marriage fight: the post-equality 'we were wrong' tour by Jeremy Hooper:

There's an interesting situation happening in Arizona, where some Democratic state legislators are pushing a bill that would remove the marriage-banning language from the state constitution. Since the courts have already found that voter-enacted ban to be unconstitutional and couples have been marrying in the state for many months, the bill is really just a formality. But what's notable is the way those who are championing the inevitable-to-pass-at-some-point legislation are talking about it. For instance:

"It's also a really important gesture to say we were wrong. The courts have decided we were wrong (and) culture is now going to prove that things have changed," said [state Rep. Stefanie Mach of District 10]
FULL: Democratic lawmakers seek to revise marriage definition in Arizona's constitution [KTAR]

"We were wrong." Yes. Indeed. I suspect we are going to be hearing this kind of concession all across the country over the next decade.

LOL! - "The gay agenda is going down in flames! Flames I tell ya!"

Hahahahahahahaha!

February 04, 2015 12:36 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"the House of Republicans has repealed Obamacare" yet again, foolishly thinking doing the same thing over and over will yield a different outcome this time.

Nope, it won't.

The vote, which passed 239 to 186, marked the fifth time that House Republicans have attempted to repeal the law in full. They have now voted 56 times on measures that would target specific provisions of the law.

As always, Republicans have no actual hope of repealing the law. In the extremely unlikely event that they find 60 votes to get their repeal bill through the Senate, President Obama would surely veto it. Furthermore, at this point it would be impossible to get rid of the law without throwing the nation’s entire health care system into chaos; as Pema Levy explains at Mother Jones, the law is now so well integrated into the nation’s health care system that simply making it disappear is a practical impossibility.

The House majority is well aware of this; they just don’t care. After dozens of failed attempts to undo Obamacare, they now candidly admit that Tuesday’s vote was purely symbolic.

“We have 47 new members of Congress on the Republican side who have never had the chance to cast their vote to repeal Obamacare,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) told Fox News’ Bret Baier last week. Others are even more blunt.

“We’re just getting it out of the way,” one unnamed House GOP aide told The Washington Examiner.

Still, the symbol of voting for repeal is clearly quite important for Republicans. So it’s worth remembering exactly what they are so determined to stand against: A law that has extended health coverage to millions and reduced the uninsured rate by more than 4 percent, all without the massive costs and job losses that Republicans have long promised the law would bring. By any reasonable standard, the Affordable Care Act is working.

It’s also worth remembering Republicans’ plan to help the millions who would lose their insurance without Obamacare: nothing. Yes, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has convened a working group to build a Republican alternative to the law. But his party has been making that promise for six years, and so far it hasn’t stuck. There’s no reason to believe that this time will be different.

But in any case, Republicans have gotten their latest repeal vote out of the way. And now they’ll sit back and hope for the Supreme Court to finish the job for them, while pundits continue to sit back and wait for the GOP to prove it can govern.

February 04, 2015 12:48 PM  
Anonymous your pipeline pal said...

"the law is now so well integrated into the nation’s health care system that simply making it disappear is a practical impossibility"

this is ignorant

integrated systems change all the time

to say they can't is simply an old rhetorical trick of socialists

before Obamacare, another health care system was integrated

some parts of Obamacare, like 26 year olds and no pre-existing system will stay because insurance companies have learned they can get away with charging for them and taking the choice from consumers

but the mandates and the government imposition of what health care they think is appropriate and the subsidies disguised as rate increases are history

"wait for the GOP to prove it can govern"

yes, if they make a decision for socialism, they've governed

if they make a decision for liberty, they haven't governed

we're all familiar with your Orwellian word games

February 04, 2015 2:38 PM  
Anonymous Obama politically pushed over edge like Emperor in Star Wars said...

OK, the Senate voted 51-49 to fund the Department of Homeland Security

Dems are using a filibuster to block

I assume David Fishback is scandalized

February 04, 2015 2:44 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Today is Rosa Park's birthday.

An entire group of Americans actually had to sit in the back of the bus, drink from separate water fountains, attend separate schools – and be refused the right to register to vote. While we have made progress, we still have a long way to go to ensure we eliminate similar injustices we still see today.

The power to make sure Rosa Park’s contribution to the voting rights movement moves forward is ours. The right to vote is still the great equalizer in this country. With our vote, we get to elect those who reflect our values. And when we finally live up to our commitment that all people are created equal, this most fundamental of rights will never be a challenge regardless of the color of our skin, gender, religion, or sexual preference.

Let’s honor Rosa Parks by registering to vote today. If you agree and want to make a difference, click here (http://www.ourtime.org/vote/) and register to vote right now or share this with a friend.

February 04, 2015 6:04 PM  
Anonymous David S. Fishback said...

I just saw Jim's Post from a couple of days ago, in which he accurately describes the quiet denouement of what was once a hot-button issue. Then I noticed that there were 53 comments! But when I read through them, I saw that only a handful were about the curriculum. That, itself, is a testament to how uncontroversial basic information on sexual orientation and gender identity is in our community in Montgomery County.

The opposition did succeed in delaying curriculum improvements for two years, and succeeded in delaying the final needed improvements for nine years. The initial MCPS decision in 2005 to settle a bogus lawsuit and start over probably made sense, given the federal judge who had the case -- he was slow to make final rulings and had already shown his ignorance of basic constitutional jurisprudence and the actual facts of the case. When the first revisions were enacted in 2007, the opposition avoided federal court and instead sued in state court, where they were roundly rebuffed. Those revisions were good, but they were incomplete.

Former Superintendent Weast's decision to avoid inclusion of some key points, over the repeated objections of the Board's Citizens Advisory Committee on Family Life and Human Development -- failing to affirmatively state in the curriculum that being gay is not an illness and failing to note the dangers and mainstream medical condemnation of so-called reparative therapies -- was unfortunate. I have my own personal theories as to why he refused to finish the job, but since I cannot see into Dr. Weast's heart, I will not express them here. Even though all Board members agreed that the information should be in the curriculum, the Board as a whole did not want to fight Dr. Weast on this point. And it was disappointing that it still took MCPS three years after Dr. Weast's departure to set things right. But last spring, it did set things right. Notwithstanding Peter Sprigg's threats, no lawsuit was brought this time. (PFLAG was ready to fight any such lawsuit, if it had come.)

The curriculum battle in Montgomery County turned out to be one of many public skirmishes in the larger struggle to secure basic human rights for LGBT people. Our victories -- both in the forum of public opinion and in the curriculum itself -- helped to educate the population generally about LGBT matters. And just as 2012 was a watershed year in Maryland, with both the General Assembly and the voters in a referendum, approving Civil Marriage Equality, it appears that 2015 will be a watershed year as the Supreme Court reviews the only U.S. Circuit Court opinion that did not strike down bans on same sex marriage (while allowing the decisions in the other Circuits mandating same sex marriage rights to succeed). The only question remaining is not the result -- the 6th Circuit decision will be overturned -- but the size of the margin in the Supreme Court and the details of the basis for the Court's eventual decision supporting Civil Marriage Equality.

Thank you, Jim, for your work with Teachthefacts.org and its wonderful website, which has provided a great repository for information on the history of this struggle. You are a superb analyst and chronicler of this piece of American progress.

February 04, 2015 9:35 PM  
Anonymous fish sticky said...

David, the unique about this site has been it's part in a larger movement among Democrats to misuse science to achieve its goals

this has led to cynicism, extreme partisanship, and degradation of the public's trust in scientists

you have continued this tactic above

there has been no scientific study concluding that homosexuality is normal, necessary to determine whether it is a mental illness, and there has been no scientific study documenting any harm from reparative therapy

opinions of scientists not based on empirical evidence are no more valid than the opinions of everyone else

"struggle to secure basic human rights for LGBT people"

your repeated use of the term "basic" is basic propaganda

do tell us what human right LGBT people have secured that they didn't have and the rest of us did

basically, the curriculum imposes the view that homosexuality is normal and any kid who dares to disagree will pay an academic price

sounds like a basic violation of free speech rights

February 05, 2015 7:51 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

One of the more unfortunate trends of the 21st century is the increasingly ugly right-wing strategy of singling out individuals—usually those who have somehow offended them by having liberal opinions—and subjecting them to grotesque smear campaigns and a deluge of abuse. Recent examples include Michelle Malkin‘s smear campaign against a 12-year-old who testified in favor of SCHIP; the bizarre multi-year campaign to discredit climate scientist Michael Mann; and the relentless haranguing of feminist video game critic Anita Sarkeesian. The goal often seems to be to “take out” the target by making the price of continuing to speak out in public so high that they quit entirely.

These kinds of harassment campaigns aren’t just immoral, but illogical. For one, the targets seem to be chosen almost at random. Plenty of people agree with Sarkeesian about video games, but she gets exponentially more abuse for it than most of her comrades. The malice conservatives aim at their targets would suggest that they think by eliminating the person, they can somehow take out the ideas the person promotes, but there’s no reason to believe that. Climate science will still be around if Mann retires tomorrow. Sarkeesian’s feminist videos are good, but if she quit making them, there are plenty of other smart women critiquing sexism in video games. No matter how successful Malkin may be at publicly humiliating a sixth-grader, she can’t change the fact that millions of children get necessary healthcare coverage through SCHIP.

So why do they do this? Michael Mann published a paper titled “The Serengeti strategy: How special interests try to intimidate scientists, and how best to fight back” that examines this question for the January edition of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Using his own experience as the punching bag conservatives hit when they want to take potshots at climate scientists, Mann argues that attacking individuals while leaving the larger group intact doesn’t seem to make sense initially, but there is a purpose to it.

“This is a classic ad hominem attack, consisting of innuendo and obfuscation, often focusing on irrelevant items, whose net effect is to direct attention away from the merits of an argument and instead to the character of the person making it,” Mann writes. “This approach appeals to feelings, emotions, and prejudices rather than intellect—exactly the point when the attacker is on the wrong side of the facts.”

He calls it the “Serengeti strategy” because the strategy reminds him of how a lion hunts zebra. Rather than trying to take down an entire herd of zebra, the lion reaches out and grabs one, often an individual who is perceived as a soft target for some reason. One is all that is needed to satiate the lion’s appetite, and one is much easier than trying to kill all of them.

In this case, the “herd” is the idea: Climate change, feminism, liberalism. Conservatives know they can’t kill off the herd. Their arguments are crappy and their beliefs often off-putting. So instead of trying to take on the herd, they target individuals. The idea isn’t to stop the debate over whether or not climate change is real or feminism is a good idea, because that’s a debate they know they can’t win. Instead, they try to make the debate about the individual’s character. They make that person the face of the idea they hate and hope that, by smearing that person, the idea will be smeared by proxy.

Mann directly experienced this when conservatives seized upon some emails he leaked and misrepresented the contents to argue, falsely, that Mann had somehow goosed his scientific findings. The conservative accusations against Mann were utterly false, but even if they were true, it really shouldn’t have meant anything. After all, as Mann points out, there’s overwhelming evidence in favor of climate change theory and his research is only a small piece of the puzzle. But Mann’s harassers didn’t see it that way. They clearly seemed to believe that by discrediting one scientist, they could bring the whole theory of climate science down.

February 05, 2015 10:53 AM  
Anonymous screamin' me-me said...

demonization of one's opponents has been taken to new heights by the current Dems

the Koch Brothers, the 1%, insurance companies, et al

this is how Barry O and Harry R have divided the country

the voters know this so your attempt to deflect and project are worthless

February 05, 2015 11:01 AM  
Anonymous swwweeeeeeeeTTT!!!!! said...

in addition to leading in Iowa, Scott Walker now leads in New Hampshire by 7 points over his closest opponent

ut-oh

looks like the gay agenda stuck up the paddle without a creek

February 05, 2015 11:08 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Prominent Conservative Argues For Marriage Equality

This is a very interesting development. Cass Sunstein has a column about Steven Calabresi’s argument that the 14th Amendment requires government recognition of same-sex marriages. Why does this matter? Because Calabresi is a legendary conservative legal scholar, one of the founders of the Federalist Society. And his argument is based on gender discrimination:


“The most detailed argument comes from Steven Calabresi, a distinguished professor at Northwestern University School of Law, a co-founder of the Federalist Society, a careful student of constitutional history and a long-time defender of originalism. Calabresi begins his analysis with the 17th-century political philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, who had a lot to say about equality, and whose ideas were borrowed for the U.S. Declaration of Independence. (“All men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights,” Locke declared.)

In Calabresi’s view, the U.S. Constitution is committed to “the complete equality of all free-born inhabitants of the thirteen States, at least as far as to the privileges and immunities of state citizenship.” And after the Civil War, the Constitution was amended to produce “a great victory for equality in every way,” including by dismantling a racial caste system.

Calabresi argues that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is a form of unconstitutional sex discrimination. A woman who is forbidden to marry a woman is a victim of discrimination insofar as she would not be so forbidden if she were male. He also believes that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is “a creature of caste.” Hence bans on same-sex marriage are “ineluctably” unconstitutional.".

Conservatives like to try to counter this with the specious argument that gay marriage bans are constitutional because anti-marriage laws mean men and women are treated "equally" in that men can marry an opposiite sex partner and not a same sex partner and the same is true for women as a group. The problem with that "reasoning" is that under the bill of rights rights apply to individuals, not groups. It is individuals who must be treated equally, not groups. That means if John has a right to marry Sally then Susan must have the same right to as John to marry Sally.

The same "groups are treated equally" argument was used in defending the ban on interracial marriage and was rejected for the the same reasons in Loving vs Virginia. Conservatives are just too dumb to learn from history.

February 05, 2015 12:20 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Look how desperate Wyatt/bad anonymous is for some encouraging news in the route conservatives are experiencing in marriage equality. He's absurdly pretending who's the leading conservative in the polls has any bearing whatsoever on the inevitable win for marriage equality when the issue will be decided by the U.S. supreme court in July and there's nothing any future potential Republican president can do about it.

The score is 30 court decisions in favour of marriage and two against. 60% of Americans now support marriage equality. Virtually all the legal experts agree the U.S. supreme court will strike down gay marriage bans and even most anti-gay anti-marriage conservatives now agree their loss is inevitable.

Wyatt/bad anonymous is so pathetically desperate and delusional I almost feel sorry for him...but I don't because he's such a dick.

February 05, 2015 12:29 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Currently there are:

* 1 District of Columbia (Washington) with marriage equality
* 36 states with full marriage equality
* 2 states in which some counties offer marriage equality
* 4 states in which pro-equality rulings are on stay
* 3 states without a ruling
* 1 state in which the marriage ban was upheld by a federal judge
* 4 states in which the ban was upheld at circuit court level (to be heard by SCOTUS)

LOL! - "The gay agenda is going down in flames! Flames I tell ya!"

Hahahahahahahaha!

LOL!

February 05, 2015 12:31 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "there has been no scientific study concluding that homosexuality is normal, necessary to determine whether it is a mental illness, and there has been no scientific study documenting any harm from reparative therapy".

Entirely false. Starting with Evelyn Hooker's work in the 1950's several dozen studies have shown gays and lesbians are indistinguishable from heterosexuals on various measures of mental health. These studies continued through the 60's, 70's, and 80's and then started to dwindle off in the 90's as it became apparent that every study was reaching the same conclusion that gayness is a normal, natural, and healthy variant of human sexuality.

Ironically, given Wyatt's false comment, what is true is that there was never any studies to justify categorizing gayness as a mental illness in the first place. Initially people just assumed it was a mental illness due to unfamiliarity and despite the lack of any evidence supporting that conclusion.

There have also been several studies showing so called "reparitive" "therapy" does harm the people undergoing it and has led many to suicide. Schidloe and Schroeder is one of the first to show this. There has also never been any studies showing "reparitive" "therapy" works.

In the most prominent study purporting to show its effectiveness Spitzer spent a year trying to find only the success stories from "ex-gay" organizations and out of aproximately 250,000 people who had gone through this "therapy" he eventually found 200 who said they had changed from gay to straight. He initially believed 37 of that group had changed representing a "success" rate of .004%. Spitzer lated renounced his study and stated he believed none of the participants (the vast majority of whom worked for "ex-gay" organizations and had a vested interest in lying) had changed.

Since that time one "ex-gay" organization after another has closed and announced that they mislead people and no one they'd ever seen had changed. This includes Exodus International, the largest "ex-gay" outfit whose leaders admitted they'd lied about people changing and apologized to all they'd hurt.

There's been one prominent "ex-gay" leader/poster boy after another anouncing they lied about changing and that they are still gay or bisexual and the entire "reparitive" "therapy" industrie is in shambles - they just couldn't keep up the facade and hide from the fact that they were hurting people for no reason.

For these reasons it is the position of every major medical and mental health organization that gayness is normal, natural, and healthy for a minority of the population and that efforts to change sexual orientation are not recommended because they are ineffective and potentially harmful.

February 05, 2015 12:48 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Former Exodus leader admits he's still bisexual. (scroll up to get to start of article)

From 2002 to 2013, Randy Thomas was the Executive Vice President of Exodus International, an umbrella organization for various ex-gay ministries across the nation. And for much of that time, Randy was committed to anti-gay political activism.

But towards the beginning of this decade, the leaders in a number of ex-gay ministries began to question some of the presumptions that held them together.

Some came to realize that while the identity and perspective of their members could be shifted, orientation (what they called same-sex attraction) seemed not to change. After a number of high-profile “lapses” and even more quiet resignations, it became apparent that even leadership was subject to the seeming rigidity of the direction of desire.
And, undoubtedly, after the 2009 Conference on Homosexuality in Kampala, Uganda, in which an Exodus board member participated and which led to the proposal of the death penalty for some gay Ugandans, the leadership at Exodus was shocked. This ultimate consequence of their message was not at all what they intended.

It’s hard to know exactly what all contributed to the decision, but by 2013, the Exodus leadership had had enough. In June, Exodus announced that it was closing shop.

Shortly after, in July, Randy Thomas wrote an apology to the gay community. He owned the hurt he had caused along with his silence about the actions of others.

He hasn’t rejected his faith, but in questioning how he had allowed himself to behave in ways that were not Christlike, he also has questioned some presumptions and attitudes that had once seemed integral. In the process he has found, I believe, a greater acceptance of both others and himself.

And perhaps it is this acceptance and quest for honesty that has brought Randy to the position of seeing himself in a way that perhaps he never has before: a devout, sincere, and faith-filled gay man.


"Four or five times, in offline social settings, over the past five months I was asked if I was gay. Each time I answered, without hesitation, “I am bi-sexual with a propensity toward dudes.” That brought smiles each time and I was told that if I was bi, gay, … whatever, they wanted me to know they accepted me. But, this is the first time in my life where I felt there were inconsistencies between what was happening in some circles as opposed to others. I started seeing the potential of a fragmented life developing and I *never* want that. There is nothing more tortured than feeling like you can’t be consistently you wherever you are."

February 05, 2015 1:06 PM  
Anonymous spliced rice said...

what Priya doesn't get is that "bi" is another way to say homosexuality is a choice

and if it's a choice, then the morally responsible choice and the choice that government should preference is gender diversity

mono-gender relationships are dangerous and unstable

ever since MCPS enacted a curriculum inappropriately implying that homosexuality is normal, the system has been declining

most of its honors math students can't pass the final exam

the superintendent who approved it soon left and his replacement walked out this week four months before his first contract was up

MCPS is in disarray

and, to think, before the gay curriculum was enacted it was considered one of the top five systems in the country

btw, Sir Barry the Historian today compared ISIS to the Christian crusades

is there any way we can talk this clown into going back to the Windy City?

February 05, 2015 2:05 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

No, "bi" is not a way to say being gay is a choice. People who are bi can't stop being bi, they can't chose to no longer have both same and opposite sex attractions. Bi people can't choose to be attracted to only one gender.

Bi-people can choose who their romantic partners are but we can't choose to change who we are atrracted to. A bi person can never stop being attracted to both genders just as a gay person can never stop being same sex attracted and start being opposite sex attracted.

And as far as "there has been no scientific study concluding that homosexuality is normal" that's nonsensical from the get-go. We live in a society where you are innocent until proven guilty. No minority group is assumed to be mentally ill until they prove otherwise. The onus is on the haters to prove gays are mentally ill, not on gays to prove they are normal.

Saying "there has been no scientific study concluding that homosexuality is normal" is akin to saying "There's no scientific study that proves black people aren't mentally ill". A just and properly functionioning society doesn't assume any minority is mentally ill by default, without proof.

Only in Wyatt/bad anonymous's dystopian society do we pre-judge minorities to be mentally ill.

February 05, 2015 3:12 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Sexual orientation is determined by who we are attracted to, not who we have romance/sex with.

Being gay, straight, or bi is a psychological characteristic, not a behavior. Sexual orientation does not change with the gender of one's romantic partner.

February 05, 2015 3:15 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

To put it more simply, if a person has same sex attractions (be they bi, lesbian, or gay) that person can never stop having same sex attractions - contrary to the dishonest way Wyatt/bad anonymous tried to characterize sexual orientation.

No one has ever stopped having same sex attractions as Randy Thomas and a flood of former leaders/poster boys for "exgay" organizations have affirmed

February 05, 2015 3:24 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

And all major medical and mental health organizations support same sex marriage and agree that same sex relationships are not "dangerous and unstable" but rather are a "normal, natural, and healthy variant of human sexuality."

Wyatt, it is the position of all major medical and mental health organizations that gays and lesbians who postively accept their orientation are happier and better adjusted than those who do no. Its time you came out of the closet and accepted yourself as the gay man you are (no completely heterosexual man is as obsessed with gays as you).

Its true that some in the LGBT community will never forgive you for your attempts to harm us and yourself but most of us are pretty forgiving types and we'll accept you with open arms once you renounce your self-loathing attempts to hurt innocent people.

February 05, 2015 3:41 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

U.S. stockpiles of natural gas have grown and prices dropped due to warmer winters.

February 05, 2015 4:41 PM  
Anonymous Health insurance companies love Obamacare! said...

"Several million previously uninsured Americans now have coverage because of Obamacare, but it could be argued that the people who have benefited most from the law—at least financially—are the top executives and shareholders of the country’s health insurance companies.

Among those who apparently have not yet benefited much at all, at least so far, are owners of small businesses who would like to keep offering coverage to their employees but can no longer afford it. They can’t afford it because insurers keep jacking their rates up so high every year that more and more of them are dropping employee health benefits altogether.

And let’s be clear, these insurers aren’t suffering. UnitedHealth Group, the largest health insurer, reported last week that it made $10.3 billion in profits in 2014 on revenues of $130.5 billion. Both profits and revenues grew seven percent from 2013.

United impressed Wall Street so much that investors pushed its share price to an all-time high. When the New York Stock Exchange closed last Thursday, United’s share price stood at $113.85, a record.

To put that in perspective, United’s share price was $30.40 on March 23, 2010, the day President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law. Since then, the company’s price per share has increased an astonishing 375 percent. That’s way more than either the Dow Jones or Standard & Poors averages has grown during the same period.

United is always the first of the big six health insurers to report earnings each quarter. When investors like what they hear from United’s executives, they typically go shopping for shares in the other five as well, believing that they, too, will soon report impressive results.

That certainly happened last week. Every one of the big six saw their shares reach or come close to reaching historic highs. Although they haven’t done quite as well as United, the other five have seen the price of their stock more than double or triple. Health Net’s share price has increased 224 percent since March 2010. Anthem’s is up 238 percent over the same time period. Aetna’s 290 percent. Cigna’s 305 percent. And Humana’s 309 percent."

Thanks for providing these interest facts, Wendell.

So the health insurance companies love Obamacare, but among WE THE PEOPLE, the Majority still supports single-payer option, poll finds.

"More than five years after the single-payer system was scrapped from ObamaCare policy debates, just over 50 percent of people say they still support the idea, including one-quarter of Republicans, according to a new poll.

The single-payer option – also known as Medicare for all – would create a new, government-run insurance program to replace private coverage. The system, once backed by President Obama, became one of the biggest casualties of the divisive healthcare debates of 2009.

The idea remains extremely popular among Democrats, with nearly 80 percent in support, according to the poll, which was shared first with The Hill by the Progressive Change Institute.

“There is a hunger in America for big progressive ideas," spokesperson TJ Helmstetter wrote in a statement. "The state of our union is progressive, and the president would be smart to give America the big, popular, progressive economic ideas that people have been crying out for.”"

February 05, 2015 4:59 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

No, climate models aren't exagerrating global warming

Weather and climate agencies around the world have been almost unanimous in declaring 2014 the hottest year on record — something that has promoted considerable chagrin among climate change deniers. That’s because these “skeptics” have long sought to cast doubt on man-made global warming by pointing to an alleged global warming “pause” or “slowdown” — going on to suggest that the computerized climate models that scientists use to project future temperatures are flawed, and overestimate carbon dioxide’s warming effect. Global warming deniers have dishonestly pointed to the very hot year of 1998 to falsely claim global warming has stopped but as you can see in the graph in the above link the decade of the 2000s is considerably warmer than the decade of the 1990s. So much for any "pause" in global warming.

Do the climate models consistently overestimate the warming effects of greenhouse gases like CO2?

As a recent study suggests, the answer is no. While many models didn’t predict the slower rate of temperature increase it’s not because they’re biased in favor of greenhouse-gas emissions’ warming effects. Rather, researchers report in Nature, these computer simulations just struggle to predict “chaotic” (or random) short-term changes in the climate system that can temporarily add or subtract from CO2 emissions’ warming effects.

It’s true that air temperatures have increased slower in the past 15 years or so, and climate models on average instead predicted much more warming. And scientists are slowly beginning to figure out why temperatures didn’t rise quite as much as expected.

February 05, 2015 5:10 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

One probable contributor is pure natural variability: Cyclical processes in the Earth’s climate and temporary changes in the amount of solar radiation that reach the Earth’s surface can introduce “blips” into the Earth’s warming trend. Right now, oceans may be temporarily sucking up more heat from the atmosphere than they normally do. Moreover, a temporary downturn in solar output and an increase in light-reflecting aerosol pollution (acting like a chemical sunblock of sorts) could also have partially masked CO2-driven warming.

But researchers Jochem Marotzke of the Max Planck Institute of Meteorology and Piers M. Forster of the University of Leeds also wanted to check whether climate models are biased, by testing how their temperature predictions stack up against reality. So the researchers tested how 114 model simulations that underpin last year’s assessment report of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) performed — not just for the 15-year period from 1998-2012 but for all 15-year periods stretching back to 1900. If this analysis were to show that models consistently overestimated or underestimated the amount of warming that actually occurred, then they must have some sort of systematic bias.

As it turns out, however, the models did pretty well. In each 15-year period, the model simulations produced a range of predictions. But each 15-year interval’s actual temperature trend always fell somewhere in the models’ prediction range. Moreover, even when 15-year actual temperature trends did fall toward the edges of the corresponding predicted ranges, they weren’t consistently at the higher or lower edges. Basically, when the models were missing the mark, they weren’t doing so consistently in one direction.

So, it’s true that the IPCC model runs didn’t predict the recent warming slowdown. But as these findings show, they didn’t accurately predict certain other 15-year periods of warming accelerations or slowdowns in the past either, and it’s not because they were always overestimating warming. Indeed, in some 15-year periods, the models underestimated warming. Essentially, that means climate skeptics are cherry-picking when they point out that climate models didn’t predict the recent 15-year slowdown in the rate of temperature increase.

February 05, 2015 5:11 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

So climate models may not provide the perfect picture of what will happen to temperatures in a given short-term period (on 10- or 20-year scales). But maybe they simply can’t, due to the random ways in which climate can temporarily fluctuate. That doesn’t mean that climate models aren’t valuable to us. They still give us good sense of the long-term picture, the one that is more important for us to worry about anyway: that temperatures are increasing, and that natural factors can’t explain this increase.

As the researchers argue, then, their findings ought to put to rest assertions by climate “skeptics” that climate models overestimate how much warming we’re going to get. In the end, then, the "pause" argument largely relies on the then-record temperatures of 1998 in order to create the impression that there's been little or no global warming ever since.

The fact remains that the 2000s were considerably hotter than the 1990s, and indeed, in most datasets 1998 isn't even the hottest year any longer. Without even taking 2014 into consideration at all, NASA considers 1998 merely the fourth hottest year (behind 2010, 2005, and 2007, and tied with 2002) and NOAA considers it third (behind 2010 and 2005).

February 05, 2015 5:12 PM  
Anonymous that's right! ...convince said...

there's a certain psychological malady that has become common in Western societies since the 1970s where its sufferers cling to the hope that disaster is always around the corner and everyone must stop all activity to avert disaster

this malady is most common among those who feel they are outsiders and desire strongly to impede or interfere with those who live normal lives

as you read the above four or five posts, it becomes obvious that the Priyas will talk themselves into a tizzy just to convince themselves that disaster and catastrophe is imminent and everyone must change their ways, regardless of the evidence

I think the Atlantic Ocean could freeze over and Priya would scour the internet to find someone among the billions on the planet who will agree that it's because of global warming

you will notice Priya begins saying "deniers allege there is a slowdown" and then by the end of this ranting stream of posts, Priya is discussing the slowdown as a given

so much for "alleged"

how about this little gem of happy horse crap:

"climate models may not provide the perfect picture of what will happen to temperatures due to the random ways in which climate can temporarily fluctuate"

oh yes, I see...

then:

"temperatures are increasing, and natural factors can’t explain this increase"

what do you mean the natural factors can't explain it?

I thought Priya (LP) just admitted that, to LP, climate change is random and LP doesn't understand the factors

then, suddenly, LP has such a grasp of the natural factors that LP can say categorically that natural factors can't explain the increase

someone hasn't thought through the illogic of their arguments

btw, what increase? LP also has finally admitted that the alarmist models missed the current situation

bottom line: LP and other alarmists start out with the conclusion they want and then look for evidence to prove it

a time-tested way to find yourself in error

but what can you expect from someone who has convinced themselves they are a gender they're not?

February 05, 2015 8:37 PM  
Anonymous nice computer said...

"The single-payer option would create a new, government-run insurance program to replace private coverage. The system was once backed by President Obama.
The idea remains extremely popular among Democrats, with nearly 80 percent in support."

you know, ever since November 2014, there's a precise term for ideas popular with nearly 80 percent of Democrats:

DOA

"“There is a hunger in America for big progressive ideas," spokesperson TJ Helmstetter wrote in a statement. "The state of our union is progressive, and the president would be smart to give America the big, popular, progressive economic ideas that people have been crying out for.”"

TJ, TJ...

I thought you knew

Sir Barry has on invariable to people crying out:

ignore them

that's why we have a health care system called Obamacare which is detested by the majority of Americans

February 05, 2015 8:52 PM  
Anonymous self is loafing said...

"No, "bi" is not a way to say being gay is a choice. People who are bi can't stop being bi, they can't chose to no longer have both same and opposite sex attractions. Bi people can't choose to be attracted to only one gender."

they can choose their behavior; that's all that matters; heteros are attracted to others than their spouse at times but they remain faithful; a bi can live a healthy normal life in just the same manner as a heterosexual

"Bi-people can choose who their romantic partners are but we can't choose to change who we are atrracted to"

irrelevant

"A bi person can never stop being attracted to both genders just as a gay person can never stop being same sex attracted and start being opposite sex attracted."

yes, but they have no more difficulty leading a normal life than heterosexuals

"And as far as "there has been no scientific study concluding that homosexuality is normal" that's nonsensical from the get-go. We live in a society where you are innocent until proven guilty."

mental illness is not a matter of guilt or innocence

"No minority group is assumed to be mentally ill until they prove otherwise."

they might if the basis of their categorization as "minority" is compulsion and desire

"The onus is on the haters to prove gays are mentally ill, not on gays to prove they are normal."

the fact that they cannot control the desire to act in a way that prevents them from leading a normal life is actually the definition of mental illness

"Saying "there has been no scientific study concluding that homosexuality is normal" is akin to saying "There's no scientific study that proves black people aren't mentally ill"."

no, the color of one's skin is a physical characteristic but the compulsion to act deviantly is a mental and emotional characteristic

despite your desire to conflate the two for propaganda purposes, that's the facts of the matter

"Being gay, straight, or bi is a psychological characteristic, not a behavior"

exactly, it's not a physical characteristic like skin color

thanks for conceding that point

"To put it more simply, if a person has same sex attractions (be they bi, lesbian, or gay) that person can never stop having same sex attractions"

kind of like alcoholism

doesn't mean it should be indulged or is immune to treatment

"No one has ever stopped having same sex attractions"

no one has said that's the goal of therapy

the goal is to allow one to live a happy normal life

like AA for deviancy

"And all major medical and mental health organizations"

I hate to break it to you but non-profits in America have a bias toward political correctness

"Its true that some in the LGBT community will never forgive you for your attempts to harm us"

they can't forgive a failed attempt?

pretty nasty and petty, huh?

sounds gay

"your self-loathing"

sometimes I'm accused of narcissism, sometimes self-loathing

can't be both

make up your mind what allegation you want to maintain

February 05, 2015 10:20 PM  
Anonymous Anon the Lion-Hearted said...

Sultan Obama, defender of the Muslim faith, yesterday went to the national prayer breakfast and said we shouldn't get up on our "high horse" about Islamic terrorism (although he can't bring himself to say "Islamic") because Christians fought in the crusades

this is what the Islamic fundamentalists have been saying for years

because Christians about 800 years ago tried to fight against Islamic terrorism then, we have no right to complain now

really, when will we realize we have a Manchurian candidate in the Oval Office?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/02/06/obamas_comparison_of_christianity_to_radical_islam_defies_logic_125517.html

February 06, 2015 7:27 AM  
Anonymous Facts for the liar said...

"[Obama} said we shouldn't get up on our "high horse" about Islamic terrorism"

Oh brother Anon, don't forget your God commands you --THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS AGAINST YOUR NEIGHBOR!

And that includes your President.

Here's what Obama really said in FULL QUOTES, not your bull-oney lies:

At Prayer Breakfast, Obama Decries 'Distortions' of Faith to Justify Violence

"Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington Thursday, President Barack Obama decried groups like ISIS that commit violence in the name of religion and warned that such "distortions" are not unique to any one group of people.

"We see faith driving us to do right," he said. "But we also see faith being twisted and distorted, being used as a wedge - or worse, sometimes used as a weapon."

Calling the Islamic terror group known as ISIS or ISIL "a brutal, vicious death cult," Obama noted that its extremists oppress minorities and rape women in the name of religion.

And, he said, any faith can be "twisted" by humans to justify acts of injustice and violence.

"There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency, that can pervert and distort our faith," he said.

"Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ," he added. "In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ."

The president urged all people to push back "against those who would distort our religion for their nihilistic ends."

"No God condones terror," he said. "No grievance justifies the taking of innocent lives or the oppression of those who are weaker or fewer in number."

The president also notably addressed the Dalai Lama, whose presence at the event has prompted criticism from the Chinese government.

"I want to offer a special welcome to a good friend, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who is a powerful example of what it means to practice compassion and who inspires us to speak up for the freedom and the dignity of all human beings," Obama said."



Of course you can't comprehend what he means because you are a person who is well known to distort Christianity to support your own hatred of LGBT American Citizens having the same rights as you do.

February 06, 2015 9:29 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

oh, I stand by my remarks

Obama here is implying that ISIS is just another group twisting their religion to their own end

the problem for years has been although most Muslims didn't do these things, there was always a broad swath of the Muslim street that sympathized and thought the victims of Islamic terror got what they deserved even though those on the street might not think it wise to deliver justice in the same way

what happened this week showed the promise to turn that around, finally convincing the street to turn against the terrorists

and then Obama comes along trying to assuage the anger and encourage an idea that ISIS is not much different from the rest of us

reminded of Mick Jagger's line in Sympathy for the Devil: "I shouted out who killed the Kennedys when, after all, it was you and me"

no, ISIS, it wasn't you and us

it was you

Obama needs to learn when to shut up

and he needs to resign and go home

he's over his head

February 06, 2015 9:43 AM  
Anonymous the doomed Dems said...

Democraps are so stupid

they read polls and think Americans agree with them and think that means they will win big in 2016

what they don't realize is that most people don't have the same priorities

people tend to agree, grudgingly, with all the little gay rights issue

but there are not going to vote for or against anybody on it when there are so many other important problems

in other words, the issues Dems stress poll well, but they aren’t of overriding importance to voters

in January, Pew Research asked a sample of voters to choose the issues that should be a “top priority for the president and Congress”

of 23 issues cited are these:

defending against terrorism 1st strengthening the economy 2nd
job creation 3rd
trimming the deficit 6th
reducing crime 9th
bolstering the military 11th

roads and bridges 19th
money in politics 20th
global warming 22nd

good luck, Hillary

try not to remind people you once worked for Sir Barry

February 06, 2015 12:25 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "you will notice Priya begins saying "deniers allege there is a slowdown" and then by the end of this ranting stream of posts, Priya is discussing the slowdown as a given so much for "alleged"."

Liar. What I said was "deniers allege that there is a global warming pauseor slowdown." or in your case, you allege that global warming has stopped or even that the planet is cooling. Global warming deniers like you are obviously lying and the graphs I posted show that. Global warming is continuing although recently the rate of air temperature increase isn't as great as it had been. It'll speed up again. And once again, we're talking climate models predicting the rate of air temperature increase which makes up only 2% of the global climate. Measurments of deep ocean temperatures which represent the bulk of heat sink capacity of the planet show they have warmed up at a very fast rate, faster in the last 15 years than the 15 years before that. So when we're talking atmospheric global warming there has been a "slowdown" in the rate of temperature increase, but when we take into account the environment as a whole, including ocean and land masses there has been NO global warming slowdown.


I posted "climate models may not provide the perfect picture of what will happen to temperatures due to the random ways in which climate can temporarily fluctuate"..."temperatures are increasing, and natural factors can’t explain this increase"


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "what do you mean the natural factors can't explain it? I thought Priya (LP) just admitted that, to LP, climate change is random and LP doesn't understand the factors then, suddenly, LP has such a grasp of the natural factors that LP can say categorically that natural factors can't explain the increase".

No, I never said that climate change is random, what I said was that there are random factors in the climate that make perfect prediction of short term atmospheric climate ( 10-20 yrs) difficult. This most certainly doesn't mean that climate change is random over the longer term or that we can't accurately predict what's going to happen over the longer term (50, 100, 200 yrs). Climate models haven't been perfect at predicting atmospheric warming trends over 15 year periods (although they have correctly predicted that warming would occurr, just not perfect at predicting how much) but they are very accurate at predicting warming over longer periods of time. When climate models were given the inputs from 100 or 200 years ago and run they very accurately predicted the total warming over that period of time and there was no bias over the long term to exagerating or underestimating warming. So while climate models may have overestimated the rate of atmospheric warming over the recent 15 year period and underestimated the rate of atmospheric warming over some older 15 year periods on the whole they've been quite accurate for longer terms and this means we can trust their estimates that over the next 50, or 100 years significant global warming will occurr if we don't reduce greenhouse gasses even if the warming may be faster or slower at some points during that 50 or 100 years.

February 06, 2015 12:45 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Your argument is akin to complaining about a weather forecast that says the average temperature for the 24 hour period two days from now will be 0 degrees and then 3 days later asserting the forecast was wrong because it missed the period in the night where the temperature was below zero and missed the period during the day where the temperature was above zero even though on average the temperature for that 24 hour period was zero. You're only pretending to not understand that the climate models are accurate over the long term although they may be less accurate for short term (10-20 year) fluctuations of the long term trend.


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "btw, what increase? LP also has finally admitted that the alarmist models missed the current situation".

See, how you sleazily contradict yourself just in the course of your last post? You started out by misquoting me and complaining (falsely) that I said its only alleged that the rate of atmospheric temperature increase over the past 15 years hasn't been as fast as it had previously been and you acknowledge temperatures have continued to increase by saying "the slowdown" is real and now you reverse yourself and try to falsely claim that the temperature recently hasn't increased at all. At other times you've claimed the planet has cooled over the last 15 years. You happily use whatever contradictory assertion you feel best suits your B.S. in the short term - you're just dishonest through and through. The graphs I posted clearly show there has been substantial temperature increases over the past 15 years even though the rate of increase has slowed. The hottest 3 years on record have all been since 2005 and 2014 is the hottest year ever recorded.

February 06, 2015 12:45 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "bottom line: LP and other alarmists start out with the conclusion they want and then look for evidence to prove it ...someone hasn't thought through the illogic of their arguments",

No, you're able to understand the situation isn't as simple-minded as you are trying to characterize it but you don't want to admit reality so you're willfully stupid. Things such as the tilt of the earth's axis and a 70,000 year cycle in its elliptical orbit say the earth should be cooling down and in the 60's a minority of scientists thought for these reasons it might be but a look at all the evidence since then makes it intellectually inescapable that the planet is warming rapidly instead. Its not climate scientists that are cherry-picking the data, its the global warming deniers who are focusing only on 1998 and ignoring the rest of the previous 200 years.

Ice core and tree ring data from the past 11,000 years show temperatures now are warmer than they were during 75% of the last 11,000 years and the warming that's happened in the past 100 years is unprecedented. You'll fatuously say, so what's to worry about? But the record shows just how unusual our current warming is. It's really the rates of change here that's amazing and atypical, it's warming up superfast.

Here's what happened. After the end of the ice age, the planet got warmer. Then, 5,000 years ago, it started to get cooler — but really slowly. In all, it cooled 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit, up until the last century or so. Then it flipped again — global average temperature shot up.

Temperatures now have gone from that cold period to the warm period in just 100 years. So it's taken just 100 years for the average temperature to change by 1.3 degrees, when it took 5,000 years to do that before. This is what is meant by "natural factors can't explain the current temperature increase". The climate changes to come are going to be larger than anything that human civilization and agriculture has seen in its entire existence.

February 06, 2015 12:46 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"and then Obama comes along trying to assuage the anger and encourage an idea that ISIS is not much different from the rest of us"

No he didn't, you sinful liar who has now doubled down on bearing false witness against the President.

What President Obama said is

"No God condones terror"

and

"No grievance justifies the taking of innocent lives or the oppression of those who are weaker or fewer in number."

You on the other hand, support Peter Sprigg, who supports the criminalization of homosexual behavior, AKA oppression of those who are fewer in number.

It's extremist believers like you who endanger us all.

"Obama needs to learn when to shut up

and he needs to resign and go home"


So tell us just exactly how many people voted for you to be President of the United States of America?

The answer is, "Not a single soul."

Nobody wants to listen to your crap.

But you can keep blabbing all you want right here on Vigilance and imagine what you say matters.

February 06, 2015 1:45 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I said "No, "bi" is not a way to say being gay is a choice. People who are bi can't stop being bi, they can't chose to no longer have both same and opposite sex attractions. Bi people can't choose to be attracted to only one gender."

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "they can choose their behavior; that's all that matters; heteros are attracted to others than their spouse at times but they remain faithful; a bi can live a healthy normal life in just the same manner as a heterosexual".

Of course they can live a healthy normal life, and so can gays and lesbians. They just don't need to be married to an opposite sex partner to do so. And of course it matters who we're attracted to. Mixed orientation marriages between gays and lesbians and opposite sex heterosexuals are disasters that almost always destroy the lives of the mislead heterosexual spouse and any children they have. Marriage is hard enough to make work as it is without making the gender of a spouse (one a person may not be attracted to) the first factor in picking a marriage partner over and above compatibility. Its a bad idea to decide the most important thing in a potential spouse is that they be opposite sex despite a person not being attracted to that sex or being more compatible with a same sex partner.

I said "Bi-people can choose who their romantic partners are but we can't choose to change who we are atrracted to"

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "irrelevant".

No, it couldn't be more relevant given your false claim that people can simply choose to stop experiencing same sex attractions and experience only opposite sex attractions. They cannot and therefore it is unjust and unwise to demand same sex attracted people be only allowed to have opposite sex spouses.

February 06, 2015 1:45 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I said "A bi person can never stop being attracted to both genders just as a gay person can never stop being same sex attracted and start being opposite sex attracted."

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "yes, but they have no more difficulty leading a normal life than heterosexuals".

If a bisexual person chooses an opposite sex partner of their own volition because they are the most compatible there's nothing wrong with that, but if they choose an opposite sex partner when they are more compatible with a same sex partner that's a mistake and society is ill-advised to encourage such a choice - its bad for everyone, both spouses, any children they might have, and society.

I said "And as far as "there has been no scientific study concluding that homosexuality is normal" that's nonsensical from the get-go. We live in a society where you are innocent until proven guilty."

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "mental illness is not a matter of guilt or innocence".

With you sexual orientation most certainly is a matter of guilt or innocence. You rant on endlessly about how evil and destructive to society gays and lesbians are. My point is not that mentally ill people are "guilty" but that we are assumed to be normal until proven otherwise, a healthy and just society doesn't pre-judge anyone ill without evidence in the way you want to.

February 06, 2015 1:46 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I said "No minority group is assumed to be mentally ill until they prove otherwise."

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "they might if the basis of their categorization as "minority" is compulsion and desire".

Absolutely not. Even you would not judge a heterosexual be mentally ill just because they have a compulsion and desire to have sex with an opposite gender partner. No one would judge a parent mentally ill if they have a compulsion and desire to care for their children. No, the mere presense of compulsion and desire says nothing about the state of one's mental health, its whether that compulsion or desire leads to hurting innocent people that determines whether or not it is mentally healthy. And as gayness harms no one it is by definition mentally healthy. And your desire to harm innocent LGBT people by denying them equal rights and limiting them to opposite sex marriages is by definition a mental illness.

I said "The onus is on the haters to prove gays are mentally ill, not on gays to prove they are normal."

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "the fact that they cannot control the desire to act in a way that prevents them from leading a normal life is actually the definition of mental illness".

No, the definition of mental illness is a mental characteristic or way of thinking that harms others or diminishes the happiness of the individual. As gayness harms no one and does not interfere with a person's happiness or carrying out normal day to day activities it is not a mental illness. You're not a god with the authority to define normality for any LGBT people. It is the position of every major medical and mental health organization that LGBTs who positively accept their orientation are happier and better adjusted than those who do not and that gayness is a normal, natural, and healthy variant for a minority of the population.

February 06, 2015 1:47 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I said "Saying "there has been no scientific study concluding that homosexuality is normal" is akin to saying "There's no scientific study that proves black people aren't mentally ill"."

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "no, the color of one's skin is a physical characteristic but the compulsion to act deviantly is a mental and emotional characteristic".

Inventing the computer, airplane, cancer treatments are all deviant behaviors. Mere deviancy is not automatically a bad thing. What determines whether or not it is bad is whether or not it harms others and gayness harms no one and therefore by definition is not a bad thing. So, sayting "there has been no scientific study concluding that homosexuality is normal" is akin to saying "There's no scientific study that proves black people aren't mentall ill" in that both are harmless characteristics of a person and its irrelevant that one characteristic is mental and the other physical.

I said "Being gay, straight, or bi is a psychological characteristic, not a behavior"

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "exactly, it's not a physical characteristic like skin color thanks for conceding that point".

No problem. Its irrelevant whether a person's characteristic is pychological or physical, what matters is whether or not that characteristic harms others which neither skin colour nor gayness does. Hence its just as bad to discriminate against a gay as it is to discriminate against a black person.

February 06, 2015 1:47 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I said "To put it more simply, if a person has same sex attractions (be they bi, lesbian, or gay) that person can never stop having same sex attractions"

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "kind of like alcoholism doesn't mean it should be indulged or is immune to treatment".

No, not like alcoholism because it doesn't harm the individual or infringe on them living a happy and fulfilling life. Therefore that doesn't mean gayness shouldn't be indulged in. And as we've discussed it is impossible to change same sex desires into opposite sex desires. That's why the there are no studies showing any such changes, the largest "ex-gay" organization (and many others) has shut its doors and appologized for misleading LGBT people and harming them and one "ex-gay" posterboy/leader after another has acknowledged they're still LGBT and were lying when they claimed they had changed.

I said "No one has ever stopped having same sex attractions"

Wyatt/bad anonymmous said "no one has said that's the goal of therapy the goal is to allow one to live a happy normal life like AA for deviancy".

Liar, you say it all the time. As with global warming you have no problem contradicting yourself if it suits your short term needs in an argument. All the major medical and mental health organizations agree gays and lesbians have no problem living a happy normal life if it were not for the the discrimination they experience from people like you. All the major medical and mental health organizations agree LGBTs who positively accept their orientation are happier and better adjusted than those who do not. Research has consistently shown those who try to change their orientation are harmed by the process, and may experience depression and many kill themselves when they realize they can't change because they feel overwhelmed by the thought they are going to be tortured eternally for who they are - religion is the foundation of all "exgay" programs. And when we say depression, we're not referring to the sort of occaisional mild anxiety a person quitting smoking feels as you so dishonestly suggest, we're talking real depression, as in a debilitating affliction that saps all joy from life, makes it hard or impossible to carry out day to day tasks, and makes one wish he or she were dead. No one who's quitting smoking kills themselves over it.

February 06, 2015 1:48 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "And all major medical and mental health organizations". I hate to break it to you but non-profits in America have a bias toward political correctness".

If that's true then you and your anti-gay christianists will have no trouble producing the research showing gayness is a mental illness - oh, wait, despite decades of trying you've been unable to do that BECAUSE ITS NOT A MENTAL ILLNESS. Its hilarious that you'd accuse all the major medical and mental health organizations of having a bias when all the anti-gay organizations and individuals base their objections to gayness not on any evidence that its a problem, but on an unsupported assertion in their bible/holy book that its evil. Anti-gays are the epitome of bias. The majore medical and mental health agencies have dozens and dozens of studies proving gayness is normal, natural and healthy, and no one has been able to produce any credible studies to the contrary.

I said "Its true that some in the LGBT community will never forgive you for your attempts to harm us"

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "they can't forgive a failed attempt? pretty nasty and petty, huh?".

I can't imagine why you'd think that. Its a perfectly normal and understandable reaction. No one who tries to harm others deserves or is entitled to forgiveness. If someone tried to kill you or steal all your money you'd be an extremely rare person if you were willing to say "no problem". What is amazing and shows the fundamental goodness of the LGBT community is that most of us would forgive you and welcome you with open arms once you renounce your efforts to harm the innocent.

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "your self-loathing" sometimes I'm accused of narcissism, sometimes self-loathing can't be both make up your mind what allegation you want to maintain".

I've never accused you of being narcissistic. Of being stupid, willfully stupid, delusional, pathetic, psychotic, twisted, and a self-loathing gay, but never narcissistic. Some might think you're narcissistic because you often brag about how great you are, but you and I both know that's just a facade to feign confidence in your pitiful arguments and hide how crappy you really feel about yourself.

February 06, 2015 1:49 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

And most important of all Wyatt/bad anonymous I don't want to forget that I've also truthfully accused you of being a liar. Above and beyond all else, you're a liar.

February 06, 2015 1:54 PM  
Anonymous crystal ballin' said...

ah, it took Priya a rant of ten or eleven post to make, maybe, three points

and those were wrong

well, I guess the most excitable boys are those who know they are wrong

Priya you have lied repeatedly over the months about what's happened to the climate since 1998 and now you're trying to back pedal

no biggie, I suppose, except you're always accusing everyone else of lying

but you're the one who looks worried about being caught in your lies

sorry, but spewing a river of putrid blather won't obscure that

February 06, 2015 2:16 PM  
Anonymous imagine there's no cheese crisps, easy if you try said...

"Nobody wants to listen to your crap.

But you can keep blabbing all you want right here on Vigilance and imagine what you say matters."

looks like we hit a Dem sore spot

ha-ha!!

February 06, 2015 2:46 PM  
Anonymous "No grievance justifies the taking [or wanton endangerment] of innocent lives..." said...

"An outbreak of the measles at Kenneth Copeland's Texas megachurch has gotten some attention because (1) measles is something children are generally vaccinated for, these days and (2) Kenneth Copeland is, of course, an anti-vaccine crackpot. In what seems to be yet another bitterly ironic attempt by God to teach noisy religious fundamentalists what-for, the church has thus become the epicenter of a small but worrisome outbreak that has so far infected 10 and resulted in the Department of State Health Services issuing an alert spanning North Texas.

That has megachurch pastors doing a bit of fancy dancin', with Pastor Terri Pearson (Copeland's daughter) walking back their leader's anti-vaccination stance to explain to the congregation that no, God does not really want your children to contract a potentially dangerous disease that vaccinations have all but licked because duh.

'There are a lot of people that think the Bible -- we talk about walking by faith -- it leaves out things such as, I don't know, people just get strange. But when you read the Old Testament, you find that it is full of precautionary measures, and it is full of the law.

Why did the Jewish people, why did they not die out during the plague? Because the Bible told them how to be clean, told them how to disinfect, told them there was something contagious. And the interesting thing of it, it wasn't a medical doctor per se who took care of those things, it was the priesthood….'


See there? Even back in the before-times, people were smart enough to know that if you could do a very simple thing in order to Not Die, you probably ought to do that thing and not just trust that all of God's various plagues and viruses had built-in piety detectors that would run away when they got a taste of the likes of religious you.

Helpfully, the church now states that it was an unclean outsider that brought this evil into their midst, which is a bit of a cop-out:

'Eagle Mountain International Church, about 50 miles northwest of Dallas, released a statement Tuesday that said a visitor attended a service who had been overseas and was exposed to measles.

“Therefore the congregation, staff at Kenneth Copeland Ministries and the daycare center on the property were exposed through that contact,” the statement said.'


Which is, of course, how epidemics work. Somebody goes somewhere and brings back a something that none of the other somebodies have an immunity to, infecting them all and allowing the something to spread ever-further. By vaccinating yourself and your children, you are not only making sure your family does not get the disease in question, you are also making sure that your family is not a disease-riddled pus vector oozing easily preventable plague onto all the other people in your community, causing you to be scorned as an "outsider" and the state department of health to issue up bulletins specifically naming you and your community as the disease-riddled pus vectors in question and warning your fellow human beings to wash their hands a lot if they have to come in contact with you.

"And that, children, is why the church run by an anti-vaccination crank is now holding free vaccination clinics in apparent contradiction to the beliefs of said crank. Curiously, there doesn't seem to be any word from Copeland himself; barring other evidence we can only assume that the rest of the church leadership locked him in a nice, sturdy cupboard for a while?

February 06, 2015 2:47 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Obama on Isis:

"Isis is s death cult that committs unspeakable acts of barbarism in the name of religion".

February 06, 2015 3:04 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

And I've backed up all my statments by links to a mountain of evidence that supports them. It is bad anonymous who lies so much he repeatedly contradicts himself in the name of short term expediency in a failed attempt to prop up absurd, false, and simpleminded arguments.

Don't take my word for it people, check out the links I posted and look at the data for yourself.

Wyatt/bad anonymous has nothing to back up his false and absurd claims because there isn't anything to back them up.

Note how he always shies away from any substantive discussion because his B.S. doesn't stand up to detailed scrutiny.

February 06, 2015 3:09 PM  
Anonymous the chill seas said...

Priya misspells:

Obama on Isis:

"Isis is s death cult that committs unspeakable acts of barbarism in the name of religion"

after saying this, Obama then qualifies his statement by attacking the behaviors of a few Christians about 800 years ago:

“Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,”

no, Barry, we are correct in thinking that ISIS is uniquely evil

your attempt to provide them cover is despicable

next, Priya misspells again

"And I've backed up all my statments by links to a mountain of evidence that supports them"

yes you have, and those links rarely back you up

you try to deceive whenever someone notes that the climate hasn't changed appreciably in 15 years by saying the hottest years are mostly I the 21st century

but even you are now admitting the temperature increase has "slowed"

yes, it has

below a statistical significance

"Note how he always shies away from any substantive discussion because his B.S. doesn't stand up to detailed scrutiny"

actually, you haven't said much that is new other than your new dodge that all the heat is hiding in the deep ocean depths

yet, the activity you say is causing this hasn't changed

I think Ariel the mermaid and her father, King Neptune, are doing fine

you don't have much credibility, honestly

you recently said the oceans are "burning up"

anyone who went to the beach last summer knows that's a lie

February 06, 2015 4:16 PM  
Anonymous what a mystical child said...

"Obama on Isis"

I thought he was talking about ISIS

why is Priya saying he brought some Egyptian goddess?

February 06, 2015 4:19 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Christianity lights up my life

February 06, 2015 4:29 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Priya misspells"

So what?

You mis-speak, as in

"but there are not going to vote for or against anybody on it when there are so many other important problems"
-- the doomed Dems, February 06, 2015 12:25 PM

"but there are not going to vote" you say??

Try to use correct spelling yourself.

Here it is:

"but they're not going to vote..."

Priya Lynn said "I've backed up all my statments by links to a mountain of evidence that supports them"

And she's right about that.

Our resident troll, on the other hand, makes up his own lies, and has never even bothered learning a little HTML to post links to supporting evidence.

Why?

Because facts and evidence are of no importance to monkeys who sit and fling garbage all day on their boss's buck.

February 06, 2015 5:15 PM  
Anonymous me and my measles said...

"Priya Lynn said "I've backed up all my statments by links to a mountain of evidence that supports them"

And she's right about that."

the thing about lazy PL's "mountain of evidence" is that lazy PL obviously doesn't read it beyond the titles, evidenced by the fact that lazy PL is never familiar with it

perfect example is the fact that global warming has substantially ceased for the last 15 years

lazy LP has repeatedly posted links to studies that concede this

and yet lazy LP will spout off ten posts in a row denying it

all one needs to do to counter lazy LP is to peruse the links lazy LP puts up

truth is, there is no need to post any links when lazy LP is saying things that those on both sides of the argument disagree with

lazy LP is just ignorant

and quite a liar, as well

February 06, 2015 9:37 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"but even you are now admitting the temperature increase has "slowed"

yes, it has"


If an increase has slowed, but not stopped, that means the increase is still occurring.

It's like if you gain 20 pounds stuffing your face at all the holiday parties in December, but only gain 10 pounds stuffing your face in January, you are still getting fat, but you are getting fat at a slower rate.

"perfect example is the fact that global warming has substantially ceased for the last 15 years"

Please define "substantially ceased" because it sounds like an oxymoron like "Cold as Hell" or "Virgin Birth."

Do you agree "global warming" is still increasing, but not as fast as it used to?

You can keep ignoring the scientific evidence and repeating the lie that Earth has been cooling, or "ceased...warming," forever. It won't change the facts.

We can all enjoy the weather here in DC this weekend, where Spring seems to come earlier each year.

February 7 and 8, 2015, the high temperatures in DC will be 50-60 degrees, warm enough to wash our cars ourselves.

If the climate has "substantially ceased...warming" as you claim, then perhaps your non-scientific expertise can explain why the blooming of D.C.’s cherry blossoms have shifted 5 days earlier since the 1920s.

"...I decided to analyze the historic data and plotted both March average temperatures in Washington, D.C. and cherry bloom dates dating back to 1921 (as long as bloom date records have been kept by the National Park Service). The National Park Service’s chief horticulturist Rob DeFeo has said March temperatures are the key predictor of peak bloom dates.

My analysis of temperatures and blooms dates reveals Washington’s average March temperature has warmed 2.3 degrees in the last 90 years and that the cherry blossom peak bloom date has shifted a little more than 5 days earlier (based on simple linear regression).

In other words, real-world data support the overall idea that the D.C.’s March climate is warming and the blossoms’ bloom dates are shifting earlier in response...."


Related: Could cherry blossoms one day be blooming in winter?

Let's hear your explanation about how these changes in the dates of peak DC cherry blossoms have moved earlier if climate change has, as you claim, "substantially ceased."

February 07, 2015 10:01 AM  
Anonymous tree hugger said...

you're as confused as Priya

no one denies that the planet is warmer than the 1920s

there were two spurts where the temps went up

the latest was 1975-1998

since then, the temperature hasn't gone up

you will point to statements that it has gone up

that's possibly true but the amount is so small that it is statistically insignificant

one problem is that current measurement technology is imprecise

indeed, the NASA report, that has been blasted all over the media, actually says there is a 48% chance that 2014 was the hottest year ever

if it was a large increase, the chance would be 100%

so, it's not like I gained 20 lbs then 10 lbs

it's like I gained 30 lbs then an ounce

could it start going up again?

maybe

maybe not

here's a few inconvenient truths:

1. there is a little evidence that temperature change will reach catastrophic proportions in the lifetime of any current inhabitant of our planet

2. there is no evidence that the two temperature spurts of the 20th century were anthropogenic

3. there is no correlation between "greenhouse gas" emissions and temperature: they have increased steadily as the temperature has steadied

4. the planet has been much warmer in the past and life has thrived

5. even the total increase in the 20th century is not that great; certainly not harmful

if you're worried, make like Johnny Appleseed and plant some trees

they soak up co2

February 07, 2015 12:46 PM  
Anonymous it's tropical times again said...

A Little Warming From 1975-1998: World Does Not End

February 07, 2015 2:47 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Republican Freakout:

Obama is close to reaching an agreement with Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons program and bring it into the international community. This will be the greatest foreign policy achievement by a U.S. president since Kennedy got the Russians to back down and remove missles from Cuba. And of course Republicans are frantic over the thought that Obama is close to such a major achievment and are desperate to deny him that regardless of how bad failure would be for the U.S.


To that end Republicans have crapped all over traditional American protocol and Boehner has invited Israeli president Netanyahu to address congress and talk about Iran. Republicans are desperately hoping this will offend Iran enough to get them to scuttle the impending historic de-escalation agreement all because there is no damage to the U.S. they wouldn't love to do if it means preventing Obama from getting credit for the achievment of the century.

It looks like the Republican ploy to undo historic progress is going to fail miserably. Between Obamacare and defanging Iran Obama is going to go down in history as one of the all-time greatest presidents ever.

February 07, 2015 2:50 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I'll post more on Monday so I can goad Wyatt/bad anonymous into spending his workday posting on the internet.

February 07, 2015 2:52 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Even the Wall Street Journal disagrees with your alleged and unreferenced "facts."

You can keep repeating your lies until the day you die, but your lies do not change the facts.

"...Climate experts from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, working independently, calculated that the globally averaged temperature over land and ocean surfaces for 2014 was 58.24 degrees Fahrenheit, 1.24°F (0.69°C) above the 20th century average, the highest among all years since record keeping began in 1880. By their reckoning, ***nine of the 10 warmest years now on record all occurred during the 21st century***.

Their finding confirms an analysis by the Japan Meteorological Agency, which announced earlier this month that 2014 was the hottest year world-wide on record. The records used by Japan go back to 1891.

Many scientists attribute the warming temperatures to rising concentrations of carbon dioxide, soot and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as methane and nitrous oxide, and to land-use changes. Some skeptics, however, have suggested that the rise in global temperatures has actually slowed since 1998, which was itself a record-warm year.

“Why do we think this is going on? The attribution of these long-term trends is a complicated fingerprinting exercise,” but greenhouse gas emissions play a major role, said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, who helped prepare the analysis.

“We may anticipate further record highs in the years to come,” he said.

The overall global temperature in 2014 masked considerable local variation, the climate analysts said. For example, in the U.S., parts of the Midwest and East Coast were unusually cool, while Alaska and three western states—California, Arizona and Nevada—experienced their warmest year on record.

Unusually warm temperatures also were recorded in eastern Russia, in the interior of South America, most of Europe stretching into northern Africa, as well as parts of eastern and western coastal Australia. “Every continent had some aspect of record high temperatures,” said Thomas R. Karl, director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

The U.S. scientists said Friday that unusually high ocean temperatures combined with slightly cooler land-surface temperatures to make 2014 a record-breaking year. The averaged global ocean temperatures were 1.03°F (0.57°C) above the 20th century average. That too set a record. By themselves, the land temperatures were the fourth warmest on record."

February 07, 2015 3:18 PM  
Anonymous brainiac said...

"Blogger Priya Lynn"

people in Saskatchewan are not very smart

why else would they live there?

the government there is so concerned about the low average intelligence, they've started a program to pay college graduates to live there:

"In an effort to attract more college graduates, Saskatchewan is offering both Canadians and immigrants $20,000 CAD to live and work in the city for 7 years. You’ve got to be a recent graduate though (after 2006).

The “Graduate Retention Program” is a program for natives to entice graduates from all over the world. The $20,000 bonus is paid in chunks each year.

For more information check out: http://aeei.gov.sk.ca/grp"

February 07, 2015 5:52 PM  
Anonymous deep deep steam said...

"Obama is close to reaching an agreement with Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons program"

quite a feat, considering Iran says they don't have one

"and bring it into the international community"

how would that bring it into the international community?

"This will be the greatest foreign policy achievement by a U.S. president since Kennedy got the Russians to back down and remove missles from Cuba"

you seem to be forgetting dozens of other accomplishments by other presidents

Nixon in China

Carter bringing peace between Israel and Egypt

Reagan ending the Cold War

G W Bush winning in Iraq with the surge before Obama squandered the victory

"And of course Republicans are frantic over the thought that Obama is close to such a major achievment and are desperate to deny him that regardless of how bad failure would be for the U.S."

really? funny how no one else has noticed

say, did you skip your shock treatment this week?

"To that end Boehner has invited Israeli president Netanyahu to address congress. Republicans are desperately hoping this will offend Iran"

if such a thing would offend Iran, it goes to show they aren't ready to join any "international community"

"enough to get them to scuttle the impending historic de-escalation agreement all because there is no damage to the U.S. they wouldn't love to do if it means preventing Obama from getting credit for the achievment of the century"

I mean, Katy Perry, just to name one individual, has achieved more than Sir Barry ever will

"It looks like the Republican ploy to undo historic progress is going to fail miserably"

well, it's your delusion

I guess you get to pick how it ends

"Between Obamacare and defanging Iran Obama is going to go down in history as one of the all-time greatest presidents ever"

you're forgetting winning the Nobel Peace Prize for doing nothing, expanding the gap between his rich friends and the poor, and that great global warming treaty he signed with China last month

oh, and when he was first President and had a Democratic congress how he passed a trillion dollar deficit bill that caused unemployment to surge above 10% and only come down because people gave up trying to find work

oh yeah, there's also how he has decimated the Democratic party which now has a lower percentage of governorships, state legislatures, House representatives, and Senators than at any time since the roaring twenties

and then there's how much he's accomplished for Russia and radical Islam, which have both made more territorial gains than any regimes since the Nazis

what a President!!

"I'll post more on Monday"

let me guess:

you're going to say the fifteen years in the 21st century are hotter than the average in the 20th century without mentioning the inconvenient fact that nothing has changed since 1998

except you think maybe Aquaman forgot to turn off his jacuzzie and things are getting sultry in the city of Atlantis, deep, deep down in the Mariannas trench

February 07, 2015 6:26 PM  
Anonymous Republicare said...

Good News!

Republicans have a replacement plan for Obamacare when the SCOTUS finds the state participation in Federal exchanges illegal. Republicare will make health insurance available to all U.S. citizens without infringing on any citizen's liberty. Obamacare could never pass Congress again but the alternative will and Sir Barry will have no choice but to sigh it.

Here it is. The Dem era is over. They had a chance from 2006-2014. They f'ed up.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-02-05/a-republican-alternative-to-obamacare-that-s-worth-discussing?alcmpid=view

February 08, 2015 8:19 AM  
Anonymous morning in America said...

The birthday of the greatest American Prez of the 20th century was Friday

festivities continue

the US Congress will shortly pass a bill making it an official national holiday

Obama won't veto

he wouldn't daaare

February 08, 2015 10:31 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Republicans have a replacement plan for Obamacare"

ROFLMAO!!!

Republicans cut and pasted their ‘new’ Obamacare alternative

"....Caroline Behringer, the eagle-eyed press secretary for Democrats on the House Ways & Means committee, was suspicious that this “urgent” and “explosive” new proposal had just been “devised.” So she did some sleuthing and discovered that the Republicans had lifted the thing — right down to quotes in the news release — from the rollout of the same proposal a year earlier.

This “new” plan in fact had something old, something borrowed and something blue: a two-page explainer borrowing virtually the same 700 words from the 2014 version and even set in the same robin’s-egg blue font. The only thing that appeared to be new was the name of Upton, substituted for that of Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.), who “unveiled” the plan with Hatch and Burr in 2014 but has since retired.

The nine bullet points were identical, as was the description of the Patient Choice, Affordability, Responsibility and Empowerment (CARE) Act...

This exercise in cut-and-paste legislation would seem to suggest that Republicans are not serious about their “new” proposal. Like last time, the plan hasn’t been drafted in legislative language, so it can’t be reviewed by the Congressional Budget Office to see how much it would cost and how many would lose insurance.

And there’s good reason for that: Opposing Obamacare in the abstract is easy enough, but it becomes more challenging when you present a specific alternative, because such cheaper alternatives inevitably cover fewer people and make consumers pay more for benefits. This explains why the House, in passing its 56th attempt at some form of Obamacare repeal this week, included no specific alternative but rather a suggestion that committees get together and come up with some ideas.

There is one notable difference in the 2015 version of the news release compared to 2014. It omits a quote from Hatch that said “Obamacare is a disaster.”

This is why opposing Obamacare is becoming a less appealing proposition, with or without an alternative plan. Millions have received health-care coverage, but the federal deficit and health-care inflation are down and payrolls are booming. Sky-is-falling claims sound more and more like old news.
"

February 08, 2015 11:30 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Republicans have a replacement plan for Obamacare...

... the alternative will [pass Congress] and Sir Barry will have no choice but to sigh [sic SPELLING ERROR, the word is "sign"] it."


ROFLMAO

Don't hold your breath!

Republican Alternative to Obamacare Strips Away Maternity Care

"...The CARE Act looks a lot like Mitt Romney's healthcare proposal during the 2012 election. It's a dream list of more price-sharing schemas that aim to drive down costs by forcing consumers to put more skin in the game. The rationale being that the more financial risk and burden consumers have to take on, the better their choices will be about how they spend their healthcare dollars.

The proposed CARE Act would also scrap the advances made in women's healthcare. Under the proposed legislation there would be:

No More Required Maternity Care Coverage

Before the ACA, 62 percent of plans offered by the private insurance market did not cover maternity care. Being pregnant was largely considered a pre-existing condition like cancer or diabetes in the private insurance market. Under the ACA, all healthcare plans have to offer maternity care benefits so women didn't go bankrupt or avoid pre-natal care because they chose life. Under the Republicans' proposal, insurance companies can choose to offer maternity care, or not, whatevsies. I'm sure whatever those insurance companies decide to do will be in the best interest of women's health! Love those guys!

[Yeah, don't we all?! ROFLMAO!!!]

Ban on Price Discrimination Against Women: Gone.

Before the ACA, insurers could use your gender as a way to determine your premium cost. Like if you were a smoker, overweight, or a woman, in the eyes of an insurer you had more risk than normal people/men so they could charge you more money. In 2009, the National Women's Law Center found that a 25 year-old woman could be charged 84 % more than a 25 year-old man with the exact same healthcare plan. This practice is called Gender Rating and it is banned under the ACA. In the Republican proposal, there is no such ban.

[ROFLMAO Your wife and daughters, hell, even your mother will LOVE paying more for their insurance then men do! NOT!]

No More Contraception Coverage

Health insurers and employers would no longer offer birth control coverage. Fu[dge] yes! A society that operates on the principles espoused by Hobby Lobby seems both rational and chill! The arbiters of women's sexual health should be heavily influenced by a chain store that specializes in decorative distressed clocks and BULK GLITTER..."


Ooo! That can get expensive! Inquiring minds want to know. Does this wondrous GOP plan cover vasectomy?

February 08, 2015 11:35 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Historic change in Canada:

The Supreme Court has ruled 9-0 that Canadians have a right to physician assisted suicide. 84% of Canadians support this right.

Once again, Canada sets the standard that the U.S. will eventually follow. A just and moral society cannot deny people the right to a controlled and easy death.

February 08, 2015 12:04 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Happy Belated Birthday, Ronnie Reagan!

I encourage everyone to read all about Reagan's great accomplishments here, from his creation of the modern plutocracy, to cutting and running an immediate retreat from Lebannon after the Marine Barracks was bombed and 241 US Marines were murdered, to supplying weapons to terrorists and swapping guns for hostages in the Iran/Contra scandal, to saying "I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here even though sometime back they may have entered illegally. --Ronald Reagan 10/28/1984," to raising US taxes 11 times in 8 years, to tripling the Gross Federal Debt from $900 million to $2.7 billion, and finally to his full support for gun control measures contained in the Brady Bill.

Enjoy reading all about it!

February 08, 2015 3:29 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My bad.

I was wrong, Reagan didn't triple the Gross Federal Debt from $900 Million to $2.7 Billion.

In fact, "Reagan tripled the Gross Federal Debt, from $900 BILLION to $2.7 TRILLION."

February 09, 2015 10:07 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

President Obama said something entirely accurate and factual during his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast last week, so naturally the right wing exploded in howls of outrage. Facts to them are like garlic to a vampire or taxes to a billionaire. This simple statement of fact:

“Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history,” he told the group, speaking of the tension between the compassionate and murderous acts religion can inspire. “And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

Cue the vastly overblown and melodramatic reaction:

"Some Republicans were outraged. “The president’s comments this morning at the prayer breakfast are the most offensive I’ve ever heard a president make in my lifetime,” said former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore (R). “He has offended every believing Christian in the United States. This goes further to the point that Mr. Obama does not believe in America or the values we all share.”."

February 09, 2015 11:11 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

If offends believing Christians to point out the undeniable fact that some horribly egregious and barbaric actions were justified on the grounds of Christianity? Well then maybe they need to grow up. Ta-Nehisi Coates, as usual, is spot on:

"And enslavement was not made possible through Robert’s Rules of Order, but through a 250-year reign of mass torture, industrialized murder, and normalized rape—tactics which ISIS would find familiar. Its moral justification was not “because I said so,” it was “Providence,” “the curse against Canaan,” “the Creator,” “and Christianization.” In just five years, 750,000 Americans died because of this peculiar mission of “Christianization.” Many more died before, and many more died after. In his “Segregation Now” speech, George Wallace invokes God 27 times and calls the federal government opposing him “a system that is the very opposite of Christ.”…

That this relatively mild, and correct, point cannot be made without the comments being dubbed, “the most offensive I’ve ever heard a president make in my lifetime,” by a former Virginia governor gives you some sense of the limited tolerance for any honest conversation around racism in our politics. And it gives you something much more. My colleague Jim Fallows recently wrote about the need to, at once, infantilize and deify our military. Perhaps related to that is the need to infantilize and deify our history. Pointing out that Americans have done, on their own soil, in the name of their own God, something similar to what ISIS is doing now does not make ISIS any less barbaric, or any more correct. That is unless you view the entire discussion as a kind of religious one-upmanship, in which the goal is to prove that Christianity is “the awesomest.”."

I would suggest that their real goal is to bury the horrors done in the name of Christianity and pretend they don’t exist, just as they do with the barbarism found in the Bible itself. They have no way to justify those things, so they respond with absolute fury when they are brought up. Obama’s “sin” is in telling the truth — and in the words of Col. Jessup, they can’t handle the truth.

February 09, 2015 11:12 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I said "And I've backed up all my statments by links to a mountain of evidence that supports them"

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "yes you have, and those links rarely back you up you try to deceive whenever someone notes that the climate hasn't changed appreciably in 15 years by saying the hottest years are mostly I the 21st century but even you are now admitting the temperature increase has "slowed"

Those links solidly back up what I'm saying, you just cherry-pick from them and misquote me to try to deceive people. For example: "even you are now admitting the temperature increase has "slowed".".

What I actually said was that the atmospheric rate of temperature increase has slowed but the rate of temperature increase of the entire environment has accelerated. The atmosphere only represents 2% of the total environment and things like land masses and the oceans represent the vast majority of it. You attempt to mislead by truncating and twisting my actual comments. You aren't fooling any one. Once again, the links I posted show the total environmental heating has accelerated.

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "the thing about lazy PL's "mountain of evidence" is that lazy PL obviously doesn't read it beyond the titles, evidenced by the fact that lazy PL is never familiar with it yes, it has [warmed] below a statistical significance no one denies that the planet is warmer than the 1920s there were two spurts where the temps went up the latest was 1975-1998 since then, the temperature hasn't gone up you will point to statements that it has gone up that's possibly true but the amount is so small that it is statistically insignificant".one problem is that current measurement technology is imprecise indeed, the NASA report, that has been blasted all over the media, actually says there is a 48% chance that 2014 was the hottest year ever if it was a large increase, the chance would be 100% so, it's not like I gained 20 lbs then 10 lbs it's like I gained 30 lbs then an ounce could it start going up again?

February 09, 2015 1:25 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

=========================================================
I like how you've contradicted yourself yet again in the same paragraph: "the temperature hasn't gone up" to "its possibly true it has gone up". And its highly debatable whether or not the temperature increase of 2014 was not statistically significant. Some scientists would agree that the 2014 temperature increase alone was not statistically significant but what deniers ignore is that 2014 is more likely to be the hottest year on record than any other year that's come before (and it was NCDC that said 48% chance, not NASA). The statistical significance of any one year will not be 100% but as I've repeatedly posted, it is the long term trend that tells the story and as an honest person can see and scientists will back up. This is why statisticians use regression analysis to look for trends rather than focussing on single years like 1998 or 2014 and as you can see from the regression analysis there has been a statistically significant warming trend since 1998 and throughout the 2000s. Of the 10 warmest years on record, 9 of them happened since 2000. This IS highly statistically significant and no honest scientist would deny the 2000's as a whole are significantly warmer than the 1990s. The odds that the long-term trend would have occurred in the absence of human influence are at least 1 in 1.7 million . And contrary to your false claim that my links don't back up what I'm saying, that most certainly is in there. And note how you "evolved" your claim from saying the temperature increase of 2014 isn't significant (of which scientists debate) to claiming there is no statistically significant warming increase since the 1920s which is an outrageous lie. This is standard procedure for you, go from making a small point which has some truth to it to grossly exagerrating that point to where it couldn't be more untruthful.

February 09, 2015 1:26 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

We have temperature data from 11000 years ago After the end of the ice age, the planet got warmer. Then, 5,000 years ago, it started to get cooler — but really slowly. In all, it cooled 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit, up until the last century or so. Then it flipped again — global average temperature shot up.

Temperatures now have gone from that cold period to the warm period in just 100 years. So it's taken just 100 years for the average temperature to change by 1.3 degrees, when it took 5,000 years to do that before. This is what is meant by "natural factors can't explain the current temperature increase".

So, its not at all like like "I gained "30 lbs then an ounce", proportionately its like you gained 30 lbs over 13 years and then you gained 30 lbs over 3 months - the rate of gain has increased 50 fold. And that's a 50 fold increase just for atmospheric temperatures, the rate of increase for the total envionrment is much greater!

The climate changes to come are going to be larger than anything that human civilization and agriculture has seen in its entire existence

February 09, 2015 1:26 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I said "Note how he always shies away from any substantive discussion because his B.S. doesn't stand up to detailed scrutiny"


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "actually, you haven't said much that is new other than your new dodge that all the heat is hiding in the deep ocean depths yet, the activity you say is causing this hasn't changed".

Far from being a dodge there are mountains of "evidence to support the fact that the total environment is heating up at an accelerating pace. And the slowing of the rate of increase of the atmospheric temperatures is NOT the total environment, only 2% as you like to constantly misquote me and lie about what I said or "conceded)

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "there is a little evidence that temperature change will reach catastrophic proportions in the lifetime of any current inhabitant of our planet".

It already has reached catastrophic proportions for many inhabitants of our planet. If the world warms by 2°C -- warming which may be reached in 20 to 30 years -- that will cause widespread food shortages, unprecedented heat-waves, and more intense cyclones. In the near-term, climate change, which is already unfolding, could batter the slums even more and greatly harm the lives and the hopes of individuals and families who have had little hand in raising the Earth's temperature. Wildfires in the United States, droughts in Australia and flooding in Mozambique, Pakistan and Thailand are just the tip of the iceberg. California is experiencing the worst drought its had in 1200 years.

February 09, 2015 1:28 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

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February 09, 2015 2:18 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

February 09, 2015 2:18 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

February 09, 2015 2:19 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

February 09, 2015 2:20 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I posted a couple of my responses to Wyatt about global warming on the wrong thread. Here they are:

Scientific research shows there will be a variety of devastating effects of global warming as early as 2050. There will be starvation, droughts, wildfires, war, and disease and certainly many people have already died from the effects of global warming we're already seeing you fool


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "there is no evidence that the two temperature spurts of the 20th century were anthropogenic" there is no correlation between "greenhouse gas" emissions and temperature: they have increased steadily as the temperature has steadied"


Utterly absurd assertion. The climate models show none of the global warming we've experienced in the last century when the greenhouse gas effects of higher carbon dioxide are removed. The global warming we've seen is verified by the climate models when we take into account. Even very few of the global warming deniers will refuse to admit humans are responsible for the much higher levels of CO2 we now have and 97% of scientists doing research on global warming agree humans are responsible for a substantial portion, if not the vast majority of global warming. In your pitiful attempts to "debunk the 97%" you post a link to 3 or 4 of the people included in the 97% concensus (out of 12000 papers) who complain, not that they didn't agree humans are partly responsible for global warming, but that the article implied they'd said humans were responsible for more of it than they had. Once again, pitiful, just pitiful.

February 09, 2015 2:30 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "the planet has been much warmer in the past and life has thrived even the total increase in the 20th century is not that great; certainly not harmful".

As the links I posted show, we are already experiencing harmful effects from global warming and those effects are going to accelerate over the next 30, 50, and 100 years. There is no doubt that many people have already died from increased wildfires, floods, droughts, and disease caused by the effects of global warming we've already experienced. It may be a tiny percentage of the population that has perished so far but for those people and their friends and family that certainly isn't something to scoff at. Humans are adapted to the world we've had from 50 years ago, there will be massive disruption and cost associated with adapting to the changes that are happening now and will continue to happen as the rate of change now is 50 times as fast as it has been in the past giving people and animals insufficient time to adapt easily to the changes. We are currently in a period of the greatest extinction of species that's happened in 65 million years and a significant of that is due to global warming and its acidification of the oceans. Sea levels could rise 10 feet in the next 100 years and with most of the population living near coastal areas, that alone will cost trillions upon trillions of dollars to relocate the coastal population. While rich people in first world countries may not be the ones dying from global warming in the medium term. it will certainly be very costly for them.

February 09, 2015 2:30 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "you seem to be forgetting dozens of other accomplishments by other presidents Nixon in China Carter bringing peace between Israel and Egypt Reagan ending the Cold War G W Bush winning in Iraq with the surge before Obama squandered the victory."

The trade with china evolved over decades after Nixon left office. He played a minor role. Reagan had no role in ending the cold war, the Soviet Union simply couldn't afford spending such a large portion of its GDP on the military and economic considerations alone forced them to change. Bush is responsible for starting an unprovoked war in Iraq based on the lies that Iraq was responsible for the world trade centre bombing and that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It was Bush who signed the Status of Forces agreement with the Iraqi president that required the withdrawl of American troops who were preventing the mess Bush started from falling apart. It is Bush who's responsible for the rise of Isis as he destabilized the entire region. Obama had no choice but to carry out the Status of Forces agreement Bush signed and try to undo the mess Bush got the U.S. into.

I said "And of course Republicans are frantic over the thought that Obama is close to such a major achievment and are desperate to deny him that regardless of how bad failure would be for the U.S."

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "really? funny how no one else has noticed".

How incredibly stupid of you. The U.S. has been freaking out over Iran's nuclear program for years and Republicans have been quiet about Obama solving this because they don't want to draw attention to what a major achievement this is. Obama hasn't bragged about it because its a very delicate negotiation and making a big deal out of it could destabilize the negotiation.

February 09, 2015 2:31 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I said "To that end Boehner has invited Israeli president Netanyahu to address congress. Republicans are desperately hoping this will offend Iran"

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "if such a thing would offend Iran, it goes to show they aren't ready to join any "international community"."

Nonsense. These things happen gradually, the important thing is to get Iran over that line in the sand and then continue to work with them to further stabilize the country. No intelligent person expects Iran to go from a rogue dictatorship bent on world destruction to a stable peace loving democracy overnight. But of course you're not intelligent.

I said "Between Obamacare and defanging Iran Obama is going to go down in history as one of the all-time greatest presidents ever"

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "you're forgetting winning the Nobel Peace Prize for doing nothing, expanding the gap between his rich friends and the poor, and that great global warming treaty he signed with China last month".

Well, I agree with you that Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize for nothing. But this agreement with Iran will be a belated justification for him getting the Nobel Peace Prize.

Ironic you should mention the gap between the rich and poor. I just read several articles by republicans written over the past several months denying that the gap between the rich and poor had increased at all. No explanation for you guys changing your tune and of course it was Republicans who have blocked every attempt Obama's made over the past six years to address the income gap by raising taxes on the rich, raising the minimum wage, providing subsidies to the poor for higher education, getting rid of the interest windfall the government earns on student loans and on and on and on. Ahhh, Republicans, gotta love 'em - no bigger hypocrites anywhere.

February 09, 2015 2:32 PM  
Anonymous And then there were thirty-seven said...

Alabama began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples Monday, becoming the 37th state where gays can legally wed. Probate judge Alan King issued a license to two women shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court denied the Alabama attorney general's request to extend a hold on a federal judge's ruling overturning the state's ban on gay marriage.

February 09, 2015 2:32 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "oh, and when he was first President and had a Democratic congress how he passed a trillion dollar deficit bill that caused unemployment to surge above 10% and only come down because people gave up trying to find work".

Its well recognized by enonomists that it takes about a year for an incoming presidents policies to take effect. When Obama took over there were record job losses taking place, it took time to pass his stimulas bill and have it start taking effect so unemployment continued to rise for the first several months of his term until his polices could start taking over from Bush's. But sure enough, about a year later unemployment started to drop and there have been aproximately 60 straight months of private sector job growth since then and the past three month period has seen the greatesd number of jobs created since 1997 and the unemployment rate is down to 5.7%. Republicans repeatedly blocked Obama's American Jobs Act which economists including John Mccains election economic advisor said would have created 2 million jobs and lowered the unemployment rate by a further 1%. Republicans forced Obama to cut 2 million government jobs in order to fund the government and that further slowed the economic recovery and economists say increase the unemployment rate by another percentage point.

5 trillion of the deficits Obama ran up over the years were as a result of ongoing Bush policies like tax cuts for the rich, the Medicare drug plan, and of course two wars Bush started and never put in place a mechanism to pay for them. The Obama policies in those first few years cost 1 trillion and unlike Bush's policy costs which were ongoing, Obama's were one time costs. No one blew up the deficict like Regan did when he slashed taxes and couldn't cover the loss of revenue resulting in a soaring unemployment rate, a greatly widened gap between the rich and poor, and a 300% increase of the the federal debt whereas the total debt under Obama by the end of his second term is estimated to be about 70% and most of that is due to ongoing Bush policies the Republicans forced Obama to keep in place.

February 09, 2015 2:33 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "oh yeah, there's also how he has decimated the Democratic party which now has a lower percentage of governorships, state legislatures, House representatives, and Senators than at any time since the roaring twenties".

LOL! Yeah right, and yet Obama's aproval rating is at 46% while Bush's at this time during his presidency was 36%.

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "and then there's how much he's accomplished for Russia and radical Islam, which have both made more territorial gains than any regimes since the Nazis

Funny how Republicans like to condemn Obama for what's happened with Russia but none of them have suggested any foreign policy moves of his they would have done differently. Republicans would have done the exact same thing as Obama, that's why they haven't come up with any alternative plans. And the gains of radical Islam were caused by the power vaccum Bush created when he started the unprovoked war with Iraq and failed to see that an inclusive government was put in its place. The current situation with Isis and the middle east is entirely on George Bush.

February 09, 2015 2:34 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Pro-gay marriage signals seen in U.S. Supreme Court action

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court's move on Monday to allow gay marriage to proceed in Alabama is the strongest signal yet that the justices are likely to rule in June that no state can restrict marriage to only heterosexual couples.

Of the nine justices, only two - conservatives Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia - dissented from the court's refusal to block gay weddings from starting in Alabama. Gay marriage is now legal in 37 states.

Thomas acknowledged in a dissenting opinion that the court’s move to allow gay marriages to go ahead "may well be seen as a signal of the court’s intended resolution" as it considers cases from four other states on whether same-sex marriage bans are permitted under the U.S. Constitution.

Gay rights groups shared Thomas' view.

Sarah Warbelow, Human Rights Campaign's legal director, said the justices' action on Alabama "has telegraphed there is virtually zero risk that they will issue an anti-equality ruling this summer."

Thomas' words echoed Scalia's 2013 dissent from the court's decision to invalidate a federal law that denied benefits to same-sex couples. Scalia predicted that the language of Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion in that case would give judges a green light to strike down state gay marriage bans. That's exactly what happened.

February 09, 2015 2:42 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Priya Lynn - handing Wyatt/bad anonymous his ass for 8 years running.

February 09, 2015 2:56 PM  
Anonymous Yes indeed, that's what I'm talking about! said...

WASHINGTON, Feb 9 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court's move on Monday to allow gay marriage to proceed in Alabama is the strongest signal yet that the justices are likely to rule in June that no state can restrict marriage to only heterosexual couples.

Of the nine justices, only two - conservatives Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia - dissented from the court's refusal to block gay weddings from starting in Alabama. Gay marriage is now legal in 37 states.

Thomas acknowledged in a dissenting opinion that the court's move to allow gay marriages to go ahead "may well be seen as a signal of the court's intended resolution" as it considers cases from four other states on whether same-sex marriage bans are permitted under the U.S. Constitution. Although only two justices publicly dissented, the court order did not reveal whether any other justices voted to grant the stay.

Oral arguments in the cases, which are expected to result in a definitive nationwide ruling on the matter, are due in April with a decision expected by the end of June....

More at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/09/supreme-court-gay-marriage-clarence-thomas_n_6646404.html

February 09, 2015 3:18 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Christian Science Monitor:

On Monday, Alabama became the 37th state to allow same-sex marriage, after the Supreme Court declined to issue a stay. The high court action provides perhaps the best indication yet that a majority of justices are preparing to uphold gay marriage.

"The gay agenda is going down in flames! Flames I tell ya!"

LOL! hahahahahahahaha!

Notice how Wyatt/bad anonymous is posting much more about global warming than he is about gays and marriage equality. He figures he can still deceive some people with lies about global warming but even he knows the bigots' war on gays is over.

February 09, 2015 3:44 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

And speaking of gay marriage, its the height of hypocrisy for Wyatt/bad anonymous to chastize gays and lesbians by insisting they refrain from same sex relationships, get into an opposite sex marriage with a heterosexual and have children.

Wyatt/bad anonymous is waaay past marrying age and he's still single, without children, and choosing to engage in random anonmymous sex with men in order to keep his gayness a secret.

Try practicing what you preach hypocrit.

On second thought, don't practice what you preach, its bad for everyone involved, including society.

February 09, 2015 4:27 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

And as far as Wyatt/bad anonymous's claim that under Obama Russia "made more territorial gains than any regimes since the Nazis" goes:

Since WWII Russia hostily took over Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and more recently (during Bush) Georgia and Chechnya.

Once again, Wyatt/bad anonymous just makes up crap as he goes along.

February 09, 2015 4:47 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

You didn't hear no Republicans railing about how Bush was a pussy when he looked the other way while Checnya and Georgia were being annexed by Russia. Only when something similar happens under Obama is it suddenly all the U.S. president's fault.

At least Obama has taken solid steps to put an end to the invasion of the Ukraine.

February 09, 2015 4:49 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Handwriting is on the wall for Supreme court gay marriage decision

The Supreme Court on Monday gave its strongest signal yet that advocates seeking the legalization of gay marriage nationwide have won even before April's arguments..

Normally, a state might have expected the high court to block the judge’s decision from taking effect, given that the justices had agreed to rule by June on whether gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry.

But rather than wait for the outcome, the justices instead told Alabama state officials they must now issue marriage licenses to gay couples.

“This is further confirmation that the result in the marriage cases is a foregone conclusion,” said Cornell University law professor Michael Dorf.

“The court is only supposed to issue a stay when the party seeking the stay can show they have a likelihood of winning. By declining the stay, seven of the nine justices are saying that the state is unlikely to win on the merits and therefore, come June, marriage equality will be the law of the land across the entire country.”

February 09, 2015 6:39 PM  
Anonymous told ya said...

hope a fun Ronald Reagan weekend was had by all

24 posts from Priya, 4 of which were deleted

saying, well, nothing new

homosexuals still haven't convinced electorates in most states to approve changing the definition of marriage

global warming still ceased in 1998

Vladimir Putin continues his quest to rebuild the Iron Curtain and laughs at Obama

ISIS is still taking advantage of Obama's decision to withdraw forces from Iraq

Sir Barry still has racked up more debt than any other President

Obamacare is still about to be declared unconstitutional

and John Kerry today said it may be impossible to reach a deal with Iran

and Saskatchewan is still trying to find someone, anyone, of above average intelligence to move there, they'll even pay them

but maybe 24 more posts will make enough confusion to obscure all that

nahhhh!!!

February 09, 2015 8:49 PM  
Anonymous dr frankenstein said...

you know how the temperatures haven't really changed much since 1998?

a new emerging scandal in the scientific community is showing that it may not have gone much in the last 75 years

how did this happen?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/globalwarming/11395516/The-fiddling-with-temperature-data-is-the-biggest-science-scandal-ever.html

February 10, 2015 7:20 AM  
Anonymous major tong said...

was 2014 the hottest year ever?

no, that's a fraud the media in which the media recently co-conspired with alarmist "scientists"

land-based measurements are suspect because areas around the monitors change over time as development take urban and suburban is warmer than rural

because of this, satellite monitors were placed in space a few years ago at great expense to the U.S, taxpayer

what do the satellites show?

1998 was the hottest year in the last 36 years

during that time, 2014 comes in 7th place

so if it was hotter 16 years ago than it was last year, doesn't that mean the climate has cooled?

what is the meaning of the word "is"?

http://manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2015/2/9/the-greatest-scientific-fraud-of-all-time-part-iii

February 10, 2015 7:33 AM  
Anonymous G-man said...

Barry O won a close election in 2014 by using the IRS to harass his opponents

he is refusing to release documents showing who was behind this but with a now fully functioning Congress investigating, we should find out the truth soon

Nixon did this in an election where he really didn't need to

Obama's unconstitutional adventures may have actually had an effect

and he may not be pardoned by President Walker or Huckabee

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/232249-feds-wont-release-irs-targeting-documents

February 10, 2015 7:41 AM  
Anonymous represemtative of the lollipop guild said...

Repubs have an Obamacare alternative that would insure access to health care for all Americans but, unlike Obamacare, preserve the freedom of all Americans

Barry would veto it if he got it today

but he won't have that luxury later this Spring when the SCOTUS scuttles the illegal subsidies Obama's been passing out like lollipops

http://nypost.com/2015/02/08/the-gops-obamacare-backup-ready-if-supremes-gut-law/

February 10, 2015 7:54 AM  
Anonymous win now, baby said...

it's nice to have Congress up and running again after the dark Harry Reid shutdown years

oh, Obama may veto a few things but the election is creeping closer and there are more than a few Dems who would like to serve another term and would be willing to help override

and, if not, that would just help with the election

it's win-win for everyone but the gay agenda

February 10, 2015 8:32 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wow, nothing but conspiracy theories!

But you left out Benghazi! Oops!

You cited Betsy McCaughey, the queen of the death panel conspiracy as your source for information about healthcare!

Fox Turns To Serial Misinformer Betsy McCaughey After Millions More Enroll In Obamacare

No wonder polls show Fox News Viewers [are] Uninformed

Now I realize you claim to not watch FOX news, but you and Betsy sure speak their language — lies and misinformation.

February 10, 2015 11:09 AM  
Anonymous up on a very high horse said...

good way to avoid discussing the things I was referring to

Benghazi? never thought is was a conspiracy

it was just a President who lied to cover his own failures and wound inflaming the Muslim street, leading to death and violence around the globe

death panel? the new Republicare replacement for Obamacare will fix that

then there's the stupid things Obama says when he tries to keep an open mind but winds up letting his brain fall out

hmmm..never watch FOX News?

well, not often, although last night I was flipping channels and encountered Bill O'Reilly grill David Axelrod

very amusing

actually, I rarely watch news on TV at all unless something big, such as election night, is going on, in which case I flip through the main cable news channels evenly

FOX does have a point of view but they are much more open-minded than MSNBC

as far as MSNBC goes, Chris Matthews is obnoxious but I always enjoy watching Rachel Maddow, even keeping in mind the obvious bias

despite their bias and some who are obnoxious, I'd never demonize them the way liberals demonize FOX news

why?

I really don't need to resort to such a thing to defend my positions

they pretty much defend themselves

we shouldn't get on our "high horse" about Islamic terrorism because of the crusades?

could you imagine him saying when people advocated sanctions against South Africa during apartheid?

"yeah, they are a bunch of racists over there but we shouldn't get on our high horse; after all, we use to segregate our schools"

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/02/10/president_compares_islam_to_christianity_125542.html

February 10, 2015 11:37 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I prefer Pope Francis' view to the sources you cite, right wingers like Prager and McCaughey.

"Manila, Philippines (CNN)Weighing in on last week's terror in France and the debate over freedom of expression it stirred, Pope Francis said en route to the Philippines that killing "in the name of God" is wrong, but it is also wrong to "provoke" people by belittling their religion.

The Pope stressed that there was no justification for the killing of 17 people in three separate incidents, including a massacre in and around the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The assailants were reportedly Islamist extremists, some of whom called out "Allahu akbar," which is Arabic for "God is great," as they singled out the magazine, French authorities and Jewish people.

"One cannot make war (or) kill in the name of one's own religion," Francis said on his way to the Philippines. "... To kill in the name of God is an aberration."

Still, even as he decried the violence and generally spoke in support of freedom of expression, the pontiff said that such freedom must have its limits.

He didn't mention Charlie Hebdo specifically, or its cartoon depictions of Mohammed, something that many Muslims find offensive. A previous cartoon was one reason the Paris magazine was targeted, and it didn't back down afterward, with its post-attack cover showing Mohammed again, this time crying and holding a sign with the rallying cry "Je suis Charlie," French for "I am Charlie."

Still, even without talking about the magazine by name, the Pope prefaced his remarks by saying, "let's go to Paris, let's speak clearly." He then referred to recent violence there, as well as the debate about freedom of expression.

Francis said on his flight from Colombo, Sri Lanka, to Manila that everyone had not only the liberty, but also the obligation, "to say what he thinks to help the common good."

But he added that this should be done without giving offense, because human dignity should be respected.

If a friend "says a swear word against my mother, then a punch awaits him," Francis said. Vatican Radio reported that he then "gestured with a pretend punch" directed at the friend, Alberto Gasbarri -- an action that many journalists interpreted as a joke. Vatican spokesman Thomas Rosica later told CNN the remark was "spoken colloquially," adding the Pope wasn't advocating violence or in any way justifying the terror attacks.

Right after the punch gesture, Francis said, "It's normal, it's normal.

"One cannot provoke, one cannot insult other people's faith, one cannot make fun of faith."

February 10, 2015 12:02 PM  
Anonymous don't blame me, I voted right said...

well, I'm not Catholic, and I would disagree with many things the Pope says but I generally agree with this

I don't think we should insult others religious belief's, if for no other reason than to keep them open to discussion

that doesn't excuse Obama's rhetoric

at a time when virtually the whole Islamic world was condemning the killing, Obama comes up with this

he's unbelievable

February 10, 2015 12:10 PM  
Anonymous Robert said...

I always said I wouldn't get married until I could marry in Alabama.

February 10, 2015 1:10 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "homosexuals still haven't convinced electorates in most states to approve changing the definition of marriage".

Wrong. In fact they have. 60% of Americans support marriage equality. But minority rights should never be put up for a vote. The apropriate venue to give gays and lesbians the right to marriage they deserve is in the courts by enforcing the constitutional guarantees to equal treatment under the law. In the unlikely event that the U.S. supreme court ignores the constitution and rules against marriage gays and lesbians will be well on the way to

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "global warming still ceased in 1998".

Just a few posts ago you acknowledge that the environment has continued to warm since 1998. You also said it "might" have warmed since 1998. You also said the environment has cooled since 1998. They can't all be true but then you don't care about the truth or whether or not your claims contradict each other. The truth is that atmospheric temperatures have warmed significantly since 1998 and the rate of heating in the oceans has acclerated over the past 15 years even faster than the 15 years before as the graphs in the links I posted show. The 2000s are clearly warmer than the 1990s and 9 of the ten warmest years on record have happened since 2000. There's no disputing the facts found in the links I posted, you're simply too much of a baby to admit the truth (regularly).

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "Vladimir Putin continues his quest to rebuild the Iron Curtain and laughs at Obama".

Ever since Russia passed its anti-gay laws Republicans and conservatives have been falling all over themselves praising Putin and getting all weak in the knees over him. Many of them aren't at all offended about him occupying Crimea, instead the lavish him with praise for being so tough and a desirable leader compared to the "pussy" Obama. And Republicans have never been able to offer any alternative suggestions as to how to handle the situation because there's nothing they'd have done differently than Obama. They just pathetically and dishonestly cry "That's the wrong way to do it" but can't offer anything on the "right" way to do it.

February 10, 2015 1:24 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "ISIS is still taking advantage of Obama's decision to withdraw forces from Iraq".

Bush signed the Status of Forces agreement with Iraq that forced the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq after Obama took office. Bush started an unprovoked war in Iraq under false pretenses and failed to insure the new government was inclusive of Sunnis which lead directly to the situation with Isis now. Isis is all on Bush.


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "Sir Barry still has racked up more debt than any other President".

Not in real dollars adjusted for inflation. Most of the debt incurred during Obama's terms have been due to ongoing Bush policies like two unpaid for wars, the Medicare drug benefit, and tax cuts for the rich that Republicans fought tooth and nail to prevent Obama from rolling back. Projections show by the end of Obama's term the total debt will have increased by about 70% (the majority of which Bush is responsible for) which pales in comparison to the 300% increase in total federal debt that occurred during the disasterous Reagan presidency.


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "John Kerry today said it may be impossible to reach a deal with Iran".

And of course as is typical for Wyatt/bad anonymous, he lied, Kerry said no such thing. What Kerry said was that he doesn't want to extend the talks deadline until Iran agrees to an agreement outline. And naturally Republicans desperate to scuttle any agreement because its in the best interests of not just the U.S., but Obama, are threatening to increase sanctions on Iran if the deadline is extended in order to destroy the goodwill between Iran and the U.S. that's been established and scuttle the deal. If this deal doesn't happen, it will be entirely due to the Republicans acting against the best interests of the U.S. for political reasons.

February 10, 2015 1:25 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "was 2014 the hottest year ever? no, that's a fraud the media in which the media recently co-conspired with alarmist "scientists"".

What happened to your admission that there was a 48% chance that 2014 was the hottest year on record? Oh, yeah, you don't care about the truth so stretching the truth and contradicting yourself is no problem. Wyatt thinks somehow thousands of scientists have a global conspiracy to falsely convince the public global warming is happening when there's nothing in it for them and the oil and gas industry is offering millions to any scientist who will sell his soul and falsely claim global warming isn't happening but yet precious few are willing to do so. Because scientists have a strong culture of integrity and go where the evidence takes them. Better put on your tin-foil hat Wyatt, major league baseball is using a satelitte to beam radio waves into your head and make you think the moon landing actually happened too.

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "land-based measurements are suspect because areas around the monitors change over time as development take urban and suburban is warmer than rural because of this, satellite monitors were placed in space a few years ago at great expense to the U.S, taxpayer what do the satellites show? 1998 was the hottest year in the last 36 years during that time, 2014 comes in 7th place so if it was hotter 16 years ago than it was last year, doesn't that mean the climate has cooled?"

In fact its a lie that 1998 was the hottest year in the last 36 years. Although 1998 was one of the 10 hottest years in the last 16 years as Wyatt bad anonymous pointed out, there is less certainty about the absolute heat of only one year. There is much greater certainty when several years are taken into account and regression analysis shows atmospheric temperatures have increased steadily since 1998. The odds that the long-term trend would have occurred in the absence of human influence are at least 1 in 1.7 million . The article he posted to is packed witth lies and deceptions because given that 97% of climate scientists agree the planet has continued to warm since 1998, it has to be to try and make a plausible deception.

February 10, 2015 1:26 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Surface temperature measurments are far more accurate then satellite temperature data. While early surface temperature measurements from the 1850's were not taken from as many places as they are today those measurements vary little in accuracy from measurments taken today. And the majority of global warming in the last 164 years has taken place since 1970 after more widespread temperature monitoring was in place and there is no doubt about the accuracy of those measurements. The author of this global warming denialism article falsely claims a "scandal" was uncovered by the hacking of emails of climatoligists which showed them "manipulating" the data. In fact the so called scandal was thoroughly investigated and it was discovered that the so-called data manipulation was really routine statistical analysis work that is widely accepted as valid procedures amongst statistitions and that the calculations made had no effect on the temperatures reported.

Satellites can only measure surface temperatures indirectly and there's a lot of room for error. They use microwave signlals which tend to reflect temperatures at various altitudes. As the satellites vary in age their technology is different, readings vary and the data must be adjusted to try to account for that. The area of the earth covered by each satellite needs to overlap with the area covered by other satellites to try to make the numbers compatible and this is problem prone. Each satellite has slightly different calibrations, orbits etc. To get a long term temperature series, you need to ‘splice’ together the data from various satellites, launched and de-activated at different times. You need enough overlap between the operating lives of each satellite to compare their results to establish a common baseline. Many of the satellites have had quite long lives so another factor is degradation of the equipment and ‘drift’ in their calibrations. There is then the question of whether to use a new satellite’s data with its overlap issues or continue using an older satellite with its ageing issues.

February 10, 2015 1:26 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The satellites also do not have propulsion systems so orbit decay affects the readings as does heating and cooling of the satellites. All of this combines to result in satellite temperature measurement data being quite unreliable. There are far more problems than I've mentioned here, have a look at the link to see the true depth of problems with satellite temperature data.

A favourite of global warming denialists, John Christy once claimed the satellite data show the temperature increases since 2001 are "statistically insignifcant originally made that assertion in after he completed a series of papers in the 1990s. Later analysis of the satellite data he was using in a 2006 study found him recanting that claim and writing in the study "Previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of human-induced global warming... This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected. New data sets have also been developed that do not show such discrepancies."

When the correct adjustments to the satellite data were applied the data matched much more closely the trends expected by climate models. It was also more consistent with the historical record of troposphere temperatures obtained from weather balloons. As better methods to adjust for biases in instruments and orbital changes have been developed, the differences between the surface temperature record and the troposphere have steadily decreased.

February 10, 2015 1:27 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

So, contrary to the global warming denialism article Wyatt/bad anonymous linked to there is no discrepancy between climate model projections and the surface air temperature observations. The truth is the most recent satellite data show the earth as a whole is warming.

Temperatures now have gone from that cold period to the warm period in just 100 years. So it's taken just 100 years for the average temperature to change by 1.3 degrees, when it took 5,000 years to do that before. The global warming denialism article "Is 2014 The Hottest Year Ever? Satellites Say No" tries to make a big deal out of 2014 only being warmer than the previous record hottest year by 4 one hundredths of a degree. While the change from one year to the next may be quite small what matters is how these small yearly temperature increases are adding up to something substantial over time and that is a serious matter.

"The climate changes to come are going to be larger than anything that human civilization and agriculture has seen in its entire existence," says Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "And that is quite a sobering thought."

February 10, 2015 1:28 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "it's nice to have Congress up and running again after the dark Harry Reid shutdown years".

The american public is often easily fooled, but Republicans weren't able to do so on the government shutdown. Polls showed that by a wide margin more of the public correctly blamed the Republicans for the shutdowns than the Democrats. Despite your sleazy posting of shutdown poll numbers where you swapped the Democrats blame numbers for the Republican blame numbers in a feeble attempt to mislead people.

February 10, 2015 1:28 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Booyah! Intellectually bitch-slapped Wyatt again!

I knew he was eventually going to come up with that global warming denialist B.S. about satellite data so I had the facts dug up and written down weeks ago waiting for him to try and scam us with it.

Wyatt keeps trying to con TTF readers with his global warming denialism but he can never overcome the fact that 97% of scientists agree global warming is real and manmade.


"An analysis of nearly 12,000 scientific research papers done by climate scientists concludes that there is an overwhelming scientific consensus that humans are to blame for climate change, with a dissenting view held by less than two percent of scientists."

Every now and then Wyatt/bad anonymous likes to childishly claim he's "debunked the 97%" and he posts a link to an article he purports to do so. The article pathetically points out that out of the thousands of scientists whose research was reviewed four or five of them take issue with being included in the 97% not because they think humans aren't responsible for global warming, but because they think the article didn't accurately reflect the degree to which they think humans are responsible for global warming. That's what passes for as "debunking" in Wyatt/bad anonymous's delusional mind.

February 10, 2015 1:37 PM  
Anonymous only the lonely said...

they're getting dangerous now

what the nuts have planned:

http://www.aol.com/article/2015/02/10/fed-report-time-to-examine-purposely-cooling-planet-idea/21141166/?cps=gravity_1967_-4843222437799330232

have any idea what percentage of scientists will tell you honestly that there hasn't been a statistically significant change in the global climate in the last 16 years?

let's just say Saskatchewan is a very lonely place

February 10, 2015 2:46 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"they're getting dangerous now"

Look who agrees with Michael Mann.

"Such an idea "could do far more harm than good" and scientists should treat the Earth like doctors do their patients, abiding by the rule "first, do no harm," said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann. But he favors increased study of the issue "if only for one purpose: to expose just how dangerous many of these schemes might be."

February 10, 2015 3:07 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

yes, Michael the Fraudulent and I have a rare meeting of the minds on this

February 10, 2015 3:09 PM  
Anonymous tru dat said...

well, I agree with Michael the Fraud here

fiddling with parts of creation you don't understand is always a mistake

just think of all these guys who decided to try to surgically turn themselves into girls and now live in bitter regret of having done something irreversible

they wind up hating the world and trying to spread their misery around

February 10, 2015 4:12 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "have any idea what percentage of scientists will tell you honestly that there hasn't been a statistically significant change in the global climate in the last 16 years?".

I like how he keeps contradicting himself, going from falsely complaining that I wouldn't acknowledge the rate of atmospheric temperature increase since 1998 isn't as fast as it was prior to that time(the rate of temperature increase in the oceans has accelerated since 1998), to saying "the temperature hasn't gone up" to "its possibly true it has gone up" and occaisionally interspersing that with "the planet has been cooling since 1998".

There's nothing consistant about Wyatt/bad anonymous's arguments, he happily contradicts himself whenever its expedient in the short term. Only the tiniest shred of a minority of scientists will tell you there hasn't been any statistically significant global warming since 1998 (and almost all of them are paid to lie by the oil and gas industry) because 97% of scientists agree the evidence that global warming is real and humans cause it is overwhelming.


Climate scientists may debate whether or not the temperature increase of 2014 was statistically significant enough to say it was the hottest year ever but what deniers hide from is that 2014 is more likely to be the hottest year on record than any other year that's come before. And the more years we look at the higher the statistical significicance is so there is simply not truth to the claim that the warming seen since 1998 is not statistically significant - it most certainly is and 97% of scientists say so.

The statistical significance of any one year will not be 100% but it is the long term trend that tells the story because with more data there is an increasingly higher level of certainty. This is why statisticians use regression analysis to look for trends rather than focussing on single years like 1998 or 2014 and as you can see from the regression analysis there has been a statistically significant warming trend since 1998 and throughout the 2000s. Of the 10 warmest years on record, 9 of them happened since 2000. This IS highly statistically significant and no honest scientist would deny the 2000's as a whole are significantly warmer than the 1990s. The odds that the long-term trend would have occurred in the absence of human influence are at least 1 in 1.7 million.

February 10, 2015 4:45 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

You see what Wyatt/bad anonymous is trying to do there? He's taking a claim with an elment of truth to it (there isn't enough statistically significant change in the year 2014 to say with 100% certainty that it was the hottest year ever) and then dishonestly trying to stretch that into "there isn't enough statistically significant change since 1998 to say global atmospheric temperatures have warmed since then" which he can't back up with evidence because its a bald faced lie.

The confidence of any trend over a very short time period like one year is lower due to statistical noise in the data but as more data is included in the calculation and many years are looked at the confidence level rises to the point where 97% of scientists are absolutely certain atmospheric global warming has continued since 1998 albeit at a slower rate than it had before.

And of course once again, the atmosphere represents only 2% of the global climate and the warming of the environment as a whole has accelerated since 1998.

The oceans are burning up and in the not too distant future the heat trapped there is going to be transferred to the atmosphere with devastating effects.

February 10, 2015 4:58 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Oh, and I missed the link Wyatt/bad anonymous posted to a UK Telegraph article posted by Christopher Booker alleging all the temperature data over the last 75 years has been falsified.

Amongst other things Booker is a creationists who denies evolution happens and has written extensively about how asbestos and second hand smoke are harmless to people. Booker's position on global warming requires readers to believe that "1) Most of the world's climate scientists, for reasons unspecified, decided to create a myth about human-induced global warming and have managed to twist endless measurements and computer models to fit their case, without the rest of the scientific community noticing. George W Bush and certain oil companies have, however, seen through the deception. 2) Most of the world's climate scientists are incompetent and have grossly misinterpreted their data and models, yet their faulty conclusions are not, as you might imagine, a random chaos of assertions, but all point in the same direction. Wyatt would have you all join him in putting on tin-foil hats.


In December 2009, Christopher Booker and Richard North had published an article in The Sunday Telegraph in which they questioned whether Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was using his position for personal gain, with a follow-up Telegraph article in January 2010. On 21 August 2010,The Daily Telegraph issued an apology, and withdrew the December article from their website having reportedly paid legal fees running into six figures. Dr Pachauri described the statements against him as "another attempt by the climate sceptics to discredit the IPCC."

Booker makes so many childish mistakes he's a comedy of errors

The uneducated global warming deniers like Wyatt/bad anonymous absurdly suggest you take the word of kooks like this paid by the oil and gas industry over the tens of thousands of climatoligists whose research overwhelmingly shows global warming is real and man-made. This is the best they've got - its pretty sad.

February 10, 2015 5:22 PM  
Anonymous gimme my trident said...

"I like how he keeps contradicting himself"

Do you really not understand? Are you really that moronic? There is data that is contradictory, not because of any malfeasance, but simply because the change is so slight that it is insignificant. So, if you look at data showing 1998 is the hottest year, the globe has cooled but, again not by much so it's really rhetoric. If you look at NASA's data that is based on probabilities, it has warmed but, again not by much so it's really rhetoric. The most accurate thing to say is it's not really changed much, one way or another. I know that doesn't fit well with your rabid advocacy about falling skies but that's life.

Where you've contradicted yourself is when you claimed nothing's changed and the scientists predicted the current state of affairs precisely. Obviously not true, and now you've read the papers and know that so you're trying to cover yourself- but that's life.

"Only the tiniest shred of a minority of scientists will tell you there hasn't been any statistically significant global warming since 1998"

no, they all acknowledge this

"(and almost all of them are paid to lie by the oil and gas industry)"

almost all, huh?

actually the alarmists have more motivation in dire predictions to keep from losing their funding

"because 97% of scientists agree the evidence that global warming is real and humans cause it is overwhelming""

there are so many nuances possible in this sweeping statement as to make it meaningless

"Climate scientists may debate whether or not the temperature increase of 2014 was statistically significant enough to say it was the hottest year ever but what deniers hide from is that 2014 is more likely to be the hottest year on record than any other year that's come before."

so what?

the fact that the difference is so small that there is any doubt at all shows how insignificant the numbers we're discussing are

further, if there's a 48% chance that 2014 was the hottest year, only an idiot would realize that means there's a 52% chance some other year is, and that would mean there's a 52% chance the globe has cooled since then, however slightly

it's just plain logic

February 10, 2015 5:55 PM  
Anonymous gimme my trident said...

"And the more years we look at the higher the statistical significicance is so there is simply not truth to the claim that the warming seen since 1998 is not statistically significant"

that's not true

as a matter of fact, the more years that are about the same temperature, the evidence gathers that we are on a plateau

the temperature hasn't increased significantly since 1998

that's not warming

"The statistical significance of any one year will not be 100% but it is the long term trend that tells the story because with more data there is an increasingly higher level of certainty"

well, the slight change has been going up and down

there are four different years as candidates for hottest and they go back 16 years

that's not warming

"This is why statisticians use regression analysis to look for trends rather than focussing on single years like 1998 or 2014 and as you can see from the regression analysis there has been a statistically significant warming trend since 1998 and throughout the 2000s"

since both years are candidates for hottest, it shows nothing intervening would contradict the idea that there has been no warming

it could allow for some cooling but I don't think that's what happened

"Of the 10 warmest years on record, 9 of them happened since 2000. This IS highly statistically significant"

it is indeed

it shows that the climate hasn't changed much

"and no honest scientist would deny the 2000's as a whole are significantly warmer than the 1990s"

of course not

warming was still proceeding from 1990-1998

it has since ended

"The odds that the long-term trend would have occurred in the absence of human influence are at least 1 in 1.7 million"

preposterous


"He's taking a claim with an elment of truth to it (there isn't enough statistically significant change in the year 2014 to say with 100% certainty that it was the hottest year ever) and then dishonestly trying to stretch that into "there isn't enough statistically significant change since 1998 to say global atmospheric temperatures have warmed since then""

how is that dishonest?

1998 and 2014 are candidates for the hottest year and are about the same

there certainly couldn't have been any significant warming from 1998-2014

there may have been some insignificant warming but it is by no means certain

"The confidence of any trend over a very short time period like one year is lower due to statistical noise in the data but as more data is included in the calculation and many years are looked at the confidence level rises"

16 years is a long time

the climate hasn't changed

"The oceans are burning up"

that's a lie

again, slight warming, if there even was that, can't be described as "burning up"

"and in the not too distant future the heat trapped there is going to be transferred to the atmosphere with devastating effects"

hypothetically

tell King Neptune I said hi!

February 10, 2015 5:56 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Yawn.

February 10, 2015 6:18 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

A new study finds that gay teens who come out in high school have higher well-being than those who keep their sexual orientation secret.

"Lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender teens who are out have lower levels of depression, better self-esteem, and increased life satisfaction, according to the study from University of Arizona researcher Stephen Russell, which was published in the current issue of the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry.

In the past, LGBT teens have often been counseled to conceal their sexual orientation for fear of increased victimization and bullying, Russell says, but this new research, which looked at 245 LGBT young adults, shows that the benefits of being out outweigh the risks. Unfortunately, students who identify as LGBT experience bullying in high school whether or not they are out, according to the research. But the students who disclose their sexual orientation or gender identity report higher self-esteem and less depression.

Encouraging teens to remain closeted can have severely negative effects, says study co-author Caitlyn Ryan. “We know from our other studies that requiring LGBT adolescents to keep their LGBT identities secret or not to talk about them is associated with depression, suicidal behavior, illegal drug use, and risk for HIV. And helping them learn about and disclose their LGBT identity to others helps protect against risk and helps promote self-esteem and overall health,” Ryan says.

This latest research should encourage educators to make sure their schools are positive spaces for teens to come out, Betz says. She points to four key factors that contribute to creating a safe environment for LGBT teens: hiring supportive educators, having a Gay-Straight Alliance or similar student club, establishing inclusive and enumerated policies that make clear that all students deserve to be safe and respected regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, and including LGBT lessons in the curriculum so students can see themselves reflected in the teachings of the school. “That means making sure, when we teach about human rights or social justice movements, we include LGBT history — but also that when we’re talking about a particular artist or writer or mathematician that we share if they were gay,” she says. “When we wipe those things out, LGBT students don’t see that there are amazing people in history that identified as LGBT. It also reduces victimization among all students. When kids see that LGBT people have done great things in the world and might even be their heroes, they are less likely to victimize.”.".

Once again, we see Wyatt/bad anonymous's approach of trying to force LGBT children to live as heterosexuals is destructive and unhealthy. All the major medical and mental health organizations agree gayness is a normal, natural, and healthy variant of human sexuality for a minority of the population and that gays and lesbians who positively accept their orientation are happier and better adjusted than those who do not.

February 10, 2015 6:19 PM  
Anonymous yodellin' a happy tune said...

"Yawn"

suddenly, Priya's bored with global warming?

best way the lazy ones can get out the rhetorical knot they have twisted themselves up in

ha-ha!

"A new study finds that gay teens who come out in high school have higher well-being than those who keep their sexual orientation secret"

what do you wanna bet they knew what results they were going to get before starting?

that's not science, it's advocacy

regardless of their preferences, there's no great need for high school kids to be promiscuous

everyone thinks that except for the depraved

February 10, 2015 6:33 PM  
Anonymous I've drivin' em to drink said...

"suddenly, Priya's bored with global warming?"

that's fuuuunnnny!!

yesterday, it was 24 consecutive posts and, now:

Priya's has gotten so drunk in despair of the rhetorical loss that Priya suffered that Priya can't stay awake

February 10, 2015 6:38 PM  
Anonymous the bird-bird-bird said...

"higher well-being"

what the F does this mean?

mental, emotional, physical?

sounds like advocacy

February 10, 2015 6:41 PM  
Anonymous there you go again, Barry said...

Obama's done it again

yesterday, he gave an interview where he said the victims of an anti-Semitic shooting in a Jewish deli in Paris where just victims of random violence

what a fool!


February 10, 2015 8:18 PM  
Anonymous les miserables said...

"Encouraging teens to remain closeted can have severely negative effects"

encouraging them to come out can have a severely negative effect:

they lose all control of their lives

neither gays nor straights will ever let them go back

there's a dirty little secret:

homosexuality is a cult

once one goes there. they are trapped

which is fine with Priya because:

misery loves company

February 10, 2015 9:20 PM  
Anonymous Robert said...

From what I can tell from things said in GSA meetings, most kids are out to differing degrees with different groups of people and in different situations.

February 11, 2015 9:51 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I pointed out how Wyatt/bad anonymous keeps contradicting himself, going from admitting there's been warming since 1998 to saying there hasn't to saying maybe there has to saying the warming has paused and to saying the planet has cooled since 1998.


Wyatt didn't like the truth and angrily responded "Do you really not understand? Are you really that moronic? There is data that is contradictory, not because of any malfeasance, but simply because the change is so slight that it is insignificant. So, if you look at data showing 1998 is the hottest year, the globe has cooled but, again not by much so it's really rhetoric. If you look at NASA's data that is based on probabilities, it has warmed but, again not by much so it's really rhetoric. The most accurate thing to say is it's not really changed much, one way or another. I know that doesn't fit well with your rabid advocacy about falling skies but that's life.",

Wrong. As we discussed, there's a 48% probability that 2014 is the hottest year on record. Denialists like to pretend that's the whole story but what they hide from is that 2014 is more likely to be the hottest year on record than any other year that's come before. While there's not 100% certainty when looking at short term data such as 1 year, when scientists look at longer time periods such as 10 or 15 years the uncertainty drops dramaticaly and statistically speaking we can say with certainty that the planet has warmed since 1998 because there are so many years that are the hottest on record since then that it can no longer be a statistical error.

That's what regression analysis is for, to overcome the "noisiness" of the data and show trends over the long term and the regression analysis undeniably shows the 2000's were warmer than the 1990's . There is no debate amongst scientists about this, only the occaisional liar paid for by the oil and gas industry disagrees. And the rarity of those given the millions upon millions the oil and gas industry is willing to pay for scientists to sell out their integrity shows the integrity of climatoligists is very high indeed. 13 of the 14 hottest years on record have occurred in the 21st century. That is in no way in keeping with the loony assertion that there's been "no statistically significant global warming since 1998". The odds that this long term trend would have occurred absent human influence is at least one in 1.7 million.

February 11, 2015 10:24 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

And note how Wyatt/bad anonymous has now started contradicting himself on another topic: Earlier he was ranting about how there's a global conspiracy amongst scientists to falsify temperature readings and now he says "There is data that is contradictory, not because of any malfeasance...". Once again, he doesn't care if what he says is logically consistent as long as its an expedient deception in the short term.


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "Where you've contradicted yourself is when you claimed nothing's changed and the scientists predicted the current state of affairs precisely. Obviously not true, and now you've read the papers and know that so you're trying to cover yourself- but that's life.".

I never said any such thing. I spent several pages discussing how the climate models slightly overestimated the global warming that's occurred since 1998 and slightly underestimated the global warming that occurred at other times, and that on the whole over the long term the computer climate models were quite accurate. You can review this (and you obviously need to) by starting with the comment I posted in this thread at February 05, 2015 5:10 PM. I most certainly DID NOT say "nothing's changed and the scientists predicted the current state of affairs precisely.".

February 11, 2015 10:25 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I said "Only the tiniest shred of a minority of scientists will tell you there hasn't been any statistically significant global warming since 1998"


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "no, they all acknowledge this".

Right - in Bizzaro world.


I said "(and almost all of them are paid to lie by the oil and gas industry)"


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "almost all, huh? actually the alarmists have more motivation in dire predictions to keep from losing their funding".

Right, 97% of the world's climate scientists decided to create a myth about human-induced global warming and have managed to twist endless measurements and computer models to fit their case, without the rest of the scientific community noticing but George W Bush and certain oil companies have, however, seen through the deception. All to receive some sort of alleged funding they don't need because they're all salaried employees and are paid to study the climate regardless of what is happening with it. And somehow the oil and gas industyr with its trillions of dollars can't find any credible scientists to write peer reviewed papers exposing the easily scientifically provable hoax, instead having to rely on religious conservatives who believe in intelligent design and claim asbestos and cigarette smoke aren't harmful and who instead write their climate denialism in the conservative media where there is no opposing voice to discuss the actual science and then get sued for lying forcing the paper that published their crap to absorb six figures in legal fees trying in vain to defend itself and then having to aplogize for the false story in the end anyway. Your tin-foil hat needs to be a little tighter or major league baseball's satellite is going to beam radio waves into your head and convince you not only that human induced global warming is significant but that the moon landings actually happened, and 9/11 wasn't an inside job by the U.S. government.

February 11, 2015 10:25 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I posted 97% of scientists agree the evidence that global warming is real and humans cause it


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "there are so many nuances possible in this sweeping statement as to make it meaningless"

If there were "so many nuances" there wouldn't be overwhelming scientific concensus on this issue. The evidence is overwhelming and there is no debate about this in the scientific community. If humans don't stop increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere the effects in as little as 50 years will be devastating.


I said "Climate scientists may debate whether or not the temperature increase of 2014 was statistically significant enough to say it was the hottest year ever but what deniers hide from is that 2014 is more likely to be the hottest year on record than any other year that's come before."

February 11, 2015 10:26 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "so what? the fact that the difference is so small that there is any doubt at all shows how insignificant the numbers we're discussing are further, if there's a 48% chance that 2014 was the hottest year, only an idiot would [n't (sic)] realize that means there's a 52% chance some other year is, and that would mean there's a 52% chance the globe has cooled since then, however slightly".

Wrong. The first part of your statment is true: "if there's a 48% chance that 2014 was the hottest year, only an idiot would [n't (sic)] realize that means there's a 52% chance some other year is". But the second part of your statment is false: "and that would mean there's a 52% chance the globe has cooled since then, however slightly" (and I assume by "since then" you mean 1998). All climatoligists will tell you you can't identify a trend by looking at a very short time period such as one year (be it 1998 or 2014) because the short term changes are so small there is statistical uncertainty associated with it. But as you bring in more data and look at more years the statistical uncertainty drops because a regular rise in observed temperatures over a longer period of time becomes increasingly less likely to the be result of random chance. So, while scientists can't say with certainty that 2014 was the hottest year on record (although its is the year with the highest probability of being so) they can say with virtual certainty that the planet HAS continued to warm since 1998 because taking into account all the years between 1990 and 2014 shows rising temperatures all the way through. You can't determine a trend (or lack thereof) by looking only at individual years.

13 of the 14 hottest years on record have occcured in the 21st century and the odds of those repeated observations taking place and being the result of statistical error are near zero (more data over long time= more statistical confidence). The longer period we look at the higher the statistical confidence is such that when we look at the past 100 years or so the odds of the observed temperatures being what they are absent human influence is at least one in 1.7 million.

February 11, 2015 10:27 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I said "And the more years we look at the higher the statistical significicance is so there is simply not truth to the claim that the warming seen since 1998 is not statistically significant"


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "that's not true as a matter of fact, the more years that are about the same temperature, the evidence gathers that we are on a plateau".

But the years since 1998 haven't been "about the same temperature" as prior years (1998 by itself isn't statistically significant, just like 2014). 13 of the 14 hottest years on record have occurred in the 21st century. and as you can clearly see the upward trend in this regression analysis chart. Look at the second chart on this page and note how it contrasts the way climate denialists talk about temperature trends versus the way climate realists talk about temperature trends. Over the long term there is somewhat of a step-wise increase in global atmospheric temperatures with tempertures rising and then the temperature increase slowing and then the rate of increase speeding up again. Climate denialists (like you and the people you read) ignore the longer term and focus on the step portions only, deceptively starting with a very hot year such as 1998 and then falsely claiming that because there's been a slowdown in atmospheric warming in the 10 or 15 year period they're looking at that there is no long term warming trend.

February 11, 2015 10:28 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Climate realists look at the whole time period and see that on average temperatures are rising as a long term trend. The data show a warming trend since (very nearly) any start year you choose. Each of the last few decades has been successively warmer. And those are just the atmospheric temperature trends which represent only 2% of the global environment whereas seas and land masses represent the bulk of the planet's heat storing capacity. The rate of temperature increase in the oceans has been accelerating since 1998.

I said "The statistical significance of any one year will not be 100% but it is the long term trend that tells the story because with more data there is an increasingly higher level of certainty"


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "there are four different years as candidates for hottest and they go back 16 years that's not warming". 13 of the 14 hottest years of atmospheric temperatures have occurred in the 21st century. That simply couldn't have happened if there has been no atmospheric warming since 1998.

February 11, 2015 10:28 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I said "This is why statisticians use regression analysis to look for trends rather than focussing on single years like 1998 or 2014 and as you can see from the regression analysis there has been a statistically significant warming trend since 1998 and throughout the 2000s"

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "since both years are candidates for hottest, it shows nothing intervening would contradict the idea that there has been no warming".

No, because as I've shown any one year (1998 or 2014) is not as statistically significant, its a period of time of many years that determines whether its getting hotter or not and looking at all the years since 1998 it is undeniably getting hotter (albeit at a slower rate than it had prior to 1998) - there is no debate about this in the scientific community.

I posted "Of the 10 warmest years on record, 9 of them happened since 2000. This IS highly statistically significant"

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "it is indeed it shows that the climate hasn't changed much".

Of course it hasn't gotten a lot hotter in 10 years, what matters is that it has gotten hotter and over time periods of 50, 100 years that becomes a major problem. I know you don't care about what happens to future generations after you're dead but most of us do.

February 11, 2015 10:29 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I said "and no honest scientist would deny the 2000's as a whole are significantly warmer than the 1990s"


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "of course not warming was still proceeding from 1990-1998 it has since ended". You just contradicted yourself again - you're not much of a thinker, are you?


I said "He's taking a claim with an elment of truth to it (there isn't enough statistically significant change in the year 2014 to say with 100% certainty that it was the hottest year ever) and then dishonestly trying to stretch that into "there isn't enough statistically significant change since 1998 to say global atmospheric temperatures have warmed since then""


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "how is that dishonest? 1998 and 2014 are candidates for the hottest year and are about the same there certainly couldn't have been any significant warming from 1998-2014".

Because, once again, you're only looking at one year periods (which you just finished making a big deal about how they're less statistically significant!) and what determines whether or not its warmed from 1998 to 2014 is ALL the years during that time. And all those years in a regression analysis (which evens out individual years that have lower degrees of statistical confidence) undeniably show the atmosphere has warmed (albeit at a slower pace) since 1998. And once again, this is NOT including the bulk of the global climate such as the oceans where the rate of global warming has accelerated since 1998.

February 11, 2015 10:30 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I said "The confidence of any trend over a very short time period like one year is lower due to statistical noise in the data but as more data is included in the calculation and many years are looked at the confidence level rises"


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "16 years is a long time the climate hasn't changed".

You're obviously wrong as this chart of atmospheric temperatures shows, which, once again, does not include the rate of temperature increase in the oceans which has accelerated since 1998.

February 11, 2015 10:30 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "regardless of their preferences, there's no great need for high school kids to be promiscuous".

No one ever suggested high school teenagers should become promiscuous.

That bizarre comment from Wyatt on the latest study showing teenagers have better mental health when they are open about being gay or lesbian combined with his other increasingly shrill rhetoric shows just how unhinged people like him are becoming over their obvious loss of the culture war they started on LGBTs.

February 11, 2015 10:45 AM  
Anonymous longsuffering fellow said...

as usual, nothing new from Priya. I'll indulge the first one:

"As we discussed, there's a 48% probability that 2014 is the hottest year on record"

yes, that was brought up. not by you, of course. because it means there's a 52% chance it wasn't the hottest year. just because that's higher than any year, doesn't mean it's probably the hottest. it means it probably isn't. it's just that there's little certainty which of the others were. but there's a 52% chance it is one of the other years. NOT 2014.

you should try to read up on statistics. you obviously don't understand the topic.

"While there's not 100% certainty when looking at short term data such as 1 year, when scientists look at longer time periods such as 10 or 15 years the uncertainty drops dramaticaly and statistically speaking we can say with certainty that the planet has warmed since 1998 because there are so many years that are the hottest on record since then that it can no longer be a statistical error"

well, that's completely illogical if 1998 is one of the candidates for hottest. at the most, we can say it hasn't gone down. but you're quibbling over mites. things haven't changed substantially since 1998. just an inconvenient fact if alarmism is what gets you outta bed in the morning.

"That's what regression analysis is for, to overcome the "noisiness" of the data"

regression analysis might be helpful if there were substantial swings. there haven't been. for the last 16 years, there hasn't been any climate change. there aren't any squiggles to flatten out. it actually a remarkable period of stability. not many 16 year periods like it in the history of monitored and recorded weather. we're blessed.

"analysis undeniably shows the 2000's were warmer than the 1990's"

that's not germane to this discussion. we're all in agreement that temperatures went up from 1975-1998, including most of the nineties. we're in the middle of the second decade in the 21st century and it looks identical to the first decade of the 21st century. again, a remarkable period of stability. we're blessed. global warming has ceased. for now, anyway.

"13 of the 14 hottest years on record have occurred in the 21st century"

but it hasn't been getting worse. it has stabilized. again, a remarkable period of stability. we're blessed. global warming has ceased. for now, anyway.

"That is in no way in keeping with the loony assertion that there's been "no statistically significant global warming since 1998""

a fact, not a looney assertion. and it's perfectly in keeping with everything you've posted. you just don't read with a healthy skepticism so you lack understanding. again, a remarkable period of stability. we're blessed. global warming has ceased. for now, anyway.

"The odds that this long term trend would have occurred absent human influence is at least one in 1.7 million"

completely baseless statement

everyone knows that

February 11, 2015 10:54 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

It's not that Wyatt/bad anonymous is too stupid too understand that he's posting a bunch of B.S., its that he's unwilling to face reality.

The Twisted Psychology of Global Warming Deniers

"In the run-up to Earth Day this year, two major reports were released by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the largest such body in the world. On March 31, Working Group II released its report, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, and on April 13, Working Group III released its report, Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Both reports cited substantially more evidence of substantially more global warming and related impacts than past reports have, and they did so more lucidly than in past iterations.

Yet, one of the most disturbing stories to emerge around the reports was the New York Times report that language about the need for $100 billion in crisis funds to aid poor nations was removed from the Working Group III executive summary for policymakers during the final round of editing. The action neatly encapsulated the yawning gap between the growing danger of climate change — and growing maturity of climate scientists — on the one hand, and the utter lack of political will on the other.

But the growing sophistication of the scientific community is a cause for continued hope — if they can accelerate their learning curve, and follow the right path. They no longer mistakenly assume that the facts can “speak for themselves,” and they’ve gotten much better at developing ways to communicate lucidly about complex challenges and uncertainty. But the entrenched denialist, do-nothing opposition is still winning when it comes to writing the checks. If that’s to change, Australian psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky will almost certainty be part of the reason why.

February 11, 2015 11:20 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

One reason global warming opponents still have the upper hand is basic confusion over the nature and significance of uncertainty. “There are numerous instances in which politicians and opinion makers stated that ‘there is still so much uncertainty, we shouldn’t invest money to solve the climate problem,’” Lewandowsky explained to Salon. Now he has just co-authored two related articles on scientific uncertainty and climate change — “Part I. Uncertainty and unabated emissions” and “Part II. Uncertainty and mitigation” — which show this thinking is completely backwards. “This is shown to be wrong by our analysis, because uncertainty can never be too great for action. On the contrary, uncertainty implies that the problem is more likely to be worse than expected in the absence of that uncertainty.”

It’s a simple fact that your typical scientist already knows intuitively: Uncertainty grows with risk, exposure and potential loss, especially with complex nonlinear systems, like the global climate system. In fact, it’s not even possible to calculate how much damage could come from worst-case climate scenarios, as Working Group III lead co-author Christopher Field pointed out at the press conference for their report. The relationship between greater uncertainty and risk is both obvious to those in the know and invisible to those who aren’t. So it’s never been properly talked about — or even rigorously analyzed — until now.

So it doesn’t tell you how much worse things will get — which would certainly be nice to know — but it does tell you that they will get worse the more uncertain things are. In short, it gets you oriented in the right direction — 180 degrees away from where so-called “common sense” would take you. It puts you on the right path, asking the right kinds of questions, taking the right kinds of first steps, and avoiding getting lost in the confusion, mistakenly thinking that uncertainty means less to worry about. It’s hard to imagine a more basic finding.

February 11, 2015 11:21 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Acceptance and Rejection of Science

But these two recent papers are only side of the story of what Lewandowsky has been up to. He’s also written a series of papers dealing with how people process information, either rejecting or accepting science. The first showed that acceptance of several scientific propositions — including the acceptance of HIV causing AIDS, smoking causing lung cancer, and human CO2 emissions causing global warming — were all manifestations of a common factor, which in turn is correlated with a factor reflecting perceived scientific consensus. In short, the more that people perceived scientific consensus, the more they accepted scientific findings.

The second study demonstrated a causal relationship, showing that acceptance of human-caused (anthropogenic) global warming (AGW) increases when the scientific consensus is highlighted.

The impact of worldview can informally be seen in partisan trend polling data on global warming evidence perception from Pew (graph here), as well as snapshot data showing Tea Party Republicans as significant outliers, with views significantly different from other Republicans, whose views are surprisingly close to average.

Dan Kahan is a leading researcher who’s skeptical of the implications of this paper. He’s done extensive research into the resilience of perceptions, regardless of contrary information, and finds strong evidence of “identity-protective cognition” among people of all different worldviews. Not only has Kahan shown that people are resistent to information that challenges their identities and the worldviews that support them, he’s shown that more information tends to drive people apart in their views, rather than lead to convergence. People use more information to rationalize what they already believe, rather than to question and reformulate it

February 11, 2015 11:21 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

“The reason ‘consensus’ has not appeared to work in society at large to date isn’t because it’s ineffective — it’s because there is a well-funded countermovement out there that takes every opportunity to mislead the public into thinking that there isn’t a consensus,” Lewandowsky told me, in response to this argument.

But Kahan stresses it as an inescapable fact. “The real world has counter-messaging in it That’s one reason the experimental studies aren’t externally valid, in my view,” he said. “Unless those counseling ‘broadcast 97 percent’ have a plan for stifling all the culturally grounded cues that real people will be exposed to that motivate them to discount the ’97 percent’ message — as they’ve been doing for 10 years — it is bad advice, in my view, to tell communicators that they can expect ’97 percent’ to work in the world as it does in the lab.”

Establishing Consensus

To begin the first thread, we need to go back to 2004. That’s when science historian Naomi Oreskes first published an initial survey of global warming literature, “Beyond The Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change.” Climate scientists had long known that there was an overwhelming consensus on anthropogenic global warming, but Oreskes was the first to take a scientific approach to studying that consensus — just as Lewandowsky, more recently, has been the first to formalize what scientists informally knew about uncertainty.

Oreskes analyzed “928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords ‘climate change.’” She found that 75 percent of papers accepted the consensus view “either explicitly or implicitly,” while “25 percent dealt with methods or paleoclimate,” and took no position on AGW. “Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position,” she found. Later studies have found a small sliver of dissenting views, but the more the consensus has been studied, the sturdier it appears, while the dissenting literature is dogged with repeated problems.

February 11, 2015 11:22 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

For example, a 2010 paper, “Expert credibility in climate change,” recomfirmed the 97 percent consensus figure, and found that “the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC [or AGW] are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.” A 2013 paper, “Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature,” examined “11,944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011” and found that “97.1 percent endorsed the consensus position,” while a parallel self-rating survey found that “97.2 percent endorsed the consensus.”

Conspiracist Ideation — Better than Science at Playing Its Own Game

Lewandowsky co-authored two papers probing more deeply into the role of what’s known as “motivated reasoning” as an obstacle to scientific knowledge. In “The Role of Conspiracist Ideation and Worldviews in Predicting Rejection of Science,” he approached the influence of worldviews and conspiratorial thinking (AKA “conspiracist ideation”) as related types of motivated reasoning which interfere with scientific truth-seeking. In this instance, worldviews included both liberals vs. conservatives and free market orientation. Conspiracist ideation can be found across the ideological spectrum — even in the center, much to the chagrin of some — but it functions in similar patterns to resist unwanted information, regardless of subject matter.

Lewandowsky and his co-authors took a closer look at conspiracism specifically in the other paper, “NASA Faked the Moon Landing — Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science.” The second paper touched a real nerve, producing a great deal of conspiracy theorizing about Lewandowsky himself, his co-authors and others. So, naturally, being a good scientist, Lewandowsky decided to study that as well. The result was a third paper, “Recursive Fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation,” which was subsequently retracted by the publisher, following sharp attacks from climate contrarians — even though the publisher found nothing scientifically or ethically wrong with the paper. Britain’s notoriously lax libel law (changed just this year) was supposedly the reason. Following a further retreat by the publisher, three editors with the journal resigned.

February 11, 2015 11:23 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

In the paper on conspiracist ideation and worldviews, the authors wrote, “The prominence of conspiracist ideation in science rejection is not unexpected in light of its cognitive attributes.” For one thing, it provides an out for people who don’t like what the consensus says. “If you are faced with agreement among scientists, you have two choices,” Lewandowsky told me. “You either accept that they are on to something or… You think they all conspire to create a hoax for some nefarious reason. There aren’t too many other options, are there?”

“When you look at the history of science denial, there is plenty of evidence that a scientific consensus drives deniers into postulating such a conspiracy — from tobacco to AIDS to climate. A second reason conspiracist ideation crops up in resisting science is that it has greater explanatory reach than science, because it’s not constrained by “the criteria of consistency and coherence that characterize scientific reasoning.”

“In the case of climate, this is — humorously — known as the ‘Quantum theory of denial,’” Lewandowsky told me. “Deniers will claim in the same breath (or within a few minutes) that (a) temperatures cannot be measured reliably, (b) there is definitely no warming, (c) the warming isn’t caused by humans, and (d) we are doing ourselves a favor by warming the planet. The four propositions are incoherent because they cannot all be simultaneously true — and yet deniers will utter all those in close succession all the time.”.
(Priya: Wyatt/bad anonymous is a perfect example of the above).

February 11, 2015 11:23 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Finally, conspiracist ideation is also typically immune to falsification, “because contradictory evidence (e.g., climate scientists being exonerated of accusations) can be accommodated by broadening the scope of the conspiracy (exonerations are a whitewash), often with considerable creativity.”

“One good example for this is Jim Sensenbrenner, a Republican congressman who called the exonerations of climate scientists after ‘climategate’ a ‘whitewash,’” Lewandowsky said. “This happens all the time, and sometimes takes on rather baroque forms, e.g., when the United Nations is invoked.” Lewandowksy sometimes refers to this as the “self-sealing” property of conspiracist ideation. It can be absolutely maddening to try to argue against.

“One of the aspects of conspiratorial thinking is — paradoxically — that it gives people a sense of control because it gives meaning to apparent randomness. It may be more comforting to some people to think that 9/11 was an “inside job” than accepting that it was a fairly random event triggered by a few fanatics.” Even more in line with Armstrong’s thinking, he added, “I also think that there is a lot of identity politics in this, e.g., if Republicans generally think that climate change is a hoax, then it becomes a ‘tribal totem’ for others to pick up on this.”

As a further refinement, I noted that conspiracist ideation thrives on creating specific malicious others as a particuarly powerful form of meaning-making. “Yes, absolutely,” Lewandowsky responded. “There is this tension between ‘victim’ and ‘hero’ within the conspiracist worldview that leads to those contradictory positions. On the one hand (the ‘hero’ frame) it is permissible to accuse scientists of fraud and harass them, but by the same token (‘victim’ frame) scientists must do nothing to cast aspersions on the accusers or to defend themselves. Arthur Koestler has referred to those people as ‘mimophants.’ It is crucial for the public to understand this.”

February 11, 2015 11:24 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Lessons to Learn

Lewandowsky’s uncertainty papers have taken the informal knowledge that uncertainty means more unkown risk, and reframed uncertainty as the subject for scientific study. It’s too soon to know what will happen as a result, but the potential is obvious if we can put an end to knee-jerk do-nothing arguments based on uncertainty.

We do know that bringing “peripheral,” informally known subject matter to light can be an incredibly powerful way of moving human understanding forward. And there’s no field of human understanding that needs that more than the science of saving our planet — and, not incidentally, ourselves."

Editor's note: Although this article is quite pessimistic about getting people to acknowledge reality and put aside their conspiracy theories the situation is actually much better than they suggest:

"An overwhelming majority of the American public, including half of Republicans, support government action to curb global warming, according to a poll conducted by The New York Times, Stanford University and the nonpartisan environmental research group Resources for the Future. In a finding that could have implications for the 2016 presidential campaign, the poll also found that two-thirds of Americans said they were more likely to vote for political candidates who campaign on fighting climate change. They were less likely to vote for candidates who questioned or denied the science that determined that humans caused global warming."

February 11, 2015 11:25 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I said "As we discussed, there's a 48% probability that 2014 is the hottest year on record"


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "yes, that was brought up. not by you, of course. because it means there's a 52% chance it wasn't the hottest year. just because that's higher than any year, doesn't mean it's probably the hottest. it means it probably isn't. it's just that there's little certainty which of the others were. but there's a 52% chance it is one of the other years. NOT 2014. you should try to read up on statistics. you obviously don't understand the topic.".

Its you who obviously doesn't understand statistics. As we've repeatedly discussed, the uncertainty is higher with a single year (be it 1998 or 2014) but as we observe several years and the temperatures are considerably higher than normal the uncertainty drops to near zero and the regression analysis which smooths over data and takes out short term noise to show long term trends undeniably shows atmospheric temperatures have risin since 1998.. Rather hilarious of you to claim I and 10's of thousands of scientists who all agree global warming is real and human caused don't understand statistics but you and your christian conservative/intelligent design believer/asbestos and smoking aren't harmful kook do.

I said "While there's not 100% certainty when looking at short term data such as 1 year, when scientists look at longer time periods such as 10 or 15 years the uncertainty drops dramaticaly and statistically speaking we can say with certainty that the planet has warmed since 1998 because there are so many years that are the hottest on record since then that it can no longer be a statistical error"

February 11, 2015 12:06 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "well, that's completely illogical if 1998 is one of the candidates for hottest. at the most, we can say it hasn't gone down. but you're quibbling over mites. things haven't changed substantially since 1998. just an inconvenient fact if alarmism is what gets you outta bed in the morning.".

Once again, (as YOU ranted on about!) any single year has a higher degree of uncertainty associated with it. There's no way you can make a scientifically valid claim that because 1998 was observed to have a high temperature temperatures haven't risen since. Once again, its only when we look at many years, several years both before and after 1998 that we get the statistical certainty to ascertain whether or not there's an upward trend and the science undeniably shows THERE IS. You keep trying to base your whole false claim on the observation of the year 1998 as though that alone is definitive while then contradictorily claiming 2014 isn't definitive. You can't have it both ways. Either a one year time frame is definitive (in which case 2014 is the hottest year and the trend is upwards) or its not and we have to look at several years in which case THE TREND IS STILL UPWARD.

I said "That's what regression analysis is for, to overcome the "noisiness" of the data"


Wyatt/bad aonymous said "regression analysis might be helpful if there were substantial swings. there haven't been. for the last 16 years, there hasn't been any climate change. there aren't any squiggles to flatten out. it actually a remarkable period of stability. not many 16 year periods like it in the history of monitored and recorded weather. we're blessed.".

February 11, 2015 12:07 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Utter nonsense. There has been a lot of variability as the graphs clearly show. Further, if you look at the second chart on this page it shows there have been many periods where global warming has slowed followed by periods of more rapid increase and the entire trend line is a series of step-wise increase. Far from their not being any periods like the past 16 years, its in this step-wise fashion the past 100 years of global warming has played out. The data show a warming trend since (very nearly) any start year you choose. Each of the last few decades has been successively warmer. And those are just the atmospheric temperature trends which represent only 2% of the global environment whereas seas and land masses represent the bulk of the planet's heat storing capacity. The rate of temperature increase in the oceans has been accelerating since 1998.

We have temperature data from 11000 years ago After the end of the ice age, the planet got warmer. Then, 5,000 years ago, it started to get cooler — but really slowly. In all, it cooled 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit, up until the last century or so. Then it flipped again — global average temperature shot up.


Temperatures now have gone from that cold period to the warm period in just 100 years. So it's taken just 100 years for the average temperature to change by 1.3 degrees, when it took 5,000 years to do that before. This is what is meant by "natural factors can't explain the current temperature increase".

The climate changes to come are going to be larger than anything that human civilization and agriculture has seen in its entire existence.

February 11, 2015 12:08 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I said "analysis undeniably shows the 2000's were warmer than the 1990's"


Wyatt said "that's not germane to this discussion. we're all in agreement that temperatures went up from 1975-1998, including most of the nineties. we're in the middle of the second decade in the 21st century and it looks identical to the first decade of the 21st century. again, a remarkable period of stability. we're blessed. global warming has ceased. for now, anyway.".

It couldn't be more relevent to this discussion and you're absolutely wrong as the record clearly shows!. As we've discussed several times, any one year isn't particularly statistically significant (INCLUDING 1998), its the measurments over several years that show wether not there's an upward trend and the 2000s on average were warmer than the 1990's on average(including 1998!) .

February 11, 2015 12:08 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I posted "13 of the 14 hottest years on record have occurred in the 21st century"


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "but it hasn't been getting worse. it has stabilized. again, a remarkable period of stability. we're blessed. global warming has ceased. for now, anyway.".

That's the very definition of getting worse! The hottest three years on record have been since 2005 and that is much less likely to be false than true given that we have several years to look at and not just one so the statistical certainty is much better. And of course since 1998 the oceans which make up 90% of the climates heat content have had accelerated warming! Only someone in total denial of reality (you) could possibly claim global warming has ceased.

February 11, 2015 12:09 PM  

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