No, not proud, but unlike you aware of my limitations. Based on what you’ve written here, I’d bet that you are totally devoid of self-irony, and totally lack the ability to laugh at yourself.

And unlike you I generally know not to make authoritative pronouncements when I’m not qualified to do so. An example from your comment #32:

“So, why are we we still enabling the misconception fostered by the Denialists that GMST is exclusively probative, and that the energy balance is open to question? Do we still doubt our own basic physics?”

If you had addressed that comment to me, I wouldn’t have been as kind as Greg was. It’s a clear indication of how little you know and how much you think you know. Pure Dunning Kruger.

Do I have the ability to distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources? Regarding climate change, yes. And it’s a sign of your dishonesty that you try post festum to excuse your inability to produce any source by questioning my ability to make that determination.

“Why don’t you put aside your insecurity and resentment and try to advance your understanding.”

In other words, advancing my understanding means submitting to your higher wisdom. As I wrote before, “I see you as someone with a very inflated opinion of himself.” It doesn’t help that your superiority complex is here couched in pompous, sanctimonious pontificating. In case you didn’t know, a superiority complex is deeply entwined with an inferiority complex, and your reference to insecurity and resentment seems to be about you.

I have no desire to continue this discussion.

“you can’t fathom the depths of my scientific and mathematical ignorance.”

You sound proud of that. But then at the same time, you feel that you are qualified to criticize my points as “scholasticism”?

You do understand that, even when you ask for a “reliable source”, you are saying that you have the ability to decide what is and isn’t? At the same time you are poor-mouthing your own abilities?

Why don’t you put aside your insecurity and resentment and try to advance your understanding. It does require taking the chance on being wrong, as Greg and I have done in our exchange, and being grateful for what is learned.

You can calculate the distance between the Earth and the sun, but you can’t fathom the depths of my scientific and mathematical ignorance.

“Other size and movement relationships could be worked out.”

But not by me.

I’m pretty sure you can get pretty far with a sense of time, a measurement of distance, and a stick.

If you then know that some of the “stars” move around differently you might guess that they are far away or small objects.

Second, I would have to know that it can be done and how it can be done. But the problem of direct experience starts before that, so…

First, in order to perform that experiment, I would already have to know that – despite my personal experience: the sun rises and sets, the Earth doesn’t spin, because if it did I’d get dizzy, etc. – the Earth goes around the sun. The experiment wouldn’t provide me with new knowledge regarding the solar system, but would confirm knowledge that I already have from others. If the experiment didn’t show that the sun is the center of our solar system, I wouldn’t conclude: heliocentricity is a hoax! I’d conclude that the experiment had failed because I did something wrong.

“From my direct experience…”

My direct experience tells me that the sun goes around the Earth. It’s only through familiarity with the knowledge gained by others that I have another understanding of our solar system. If we limit climate discussions to personal experience, we’re left with “it’s cold where I am now.”

“Is that statement based on requiring a seemingly monotonic increase?”

A non sequitur.

“So, cosmo, if you want to think for yourself and criticize my arguments, I will be happy to discuss them. I am not interested in trading website references.”

In other words, thinking for oneself involves relying on direct experience and ignoring research done by others. Credibility is achieved by saying “trust me,” not by offering proof. You can’t provide a shred of credible evidence for your assertion, so your fall back position is that evidence doesn’t interest you.

I’m sure you know more science than I do – almost anyone does. But logic, honesty, and academic rigor are not your strong points.

I just don’t see that happening. Perhaps my own blogging reflects what climate scientists and science communicators talk about in general. I’ve written far more words about non GMST measures than about it, and that which I’ve written about GMST has almost always been about how that is only part of the story. Just follow my first link back, then from there, go to “http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2014/12/03/2014-will-not-be-the-warmest-year-on-record-but-global-warming-is-still-real/” … very hard to argue that I’m facilitating GMST as “exclusive probative” and I know I’m not unique among my colleagues.

So, yes, but we are on it already, and have been all along!

I would say that 35% is a conservative estimate for the hard core, and then there is the overlapping set of 12% that believe they were abducted by aliens while Bigfoot was watching (and the 1% that think they are aliens or Bigfoot, so that actually all works out pretty well).

You may live in a more enlightened country than the USA. Here, we still have a majority that rejects Evolution. There is a ‘hard core’ of maybe 35% that will reject anything that President Obama agrees with, as directed by Rush Limbaugh– when Rush (and Fox News) tells them that “there hasn’t been any warming in 15 or 18 or whatever years”, they will repeat that; we see it in comments all the time. There is perhaps another 10% that are smarter but will pick up that argument and use it.

Is that statement based on requiring a seemingly monotonic increase? From my direct experience with many freshman physics students, yes, that is what they are thinking– it is not an unreasonable intuitive misconception if you only have a high school (USA) education. They are not distinguishing between trends, smoothed data, and full data.

So, cosmo, if you want to think for yourself and criticize my arguments, I will be happy to discuss them. I am not interested in trading website references.