Naturally, I cannot speak for BA, but I was under the impression that one of the objectives of his blog was to debunk bad science (hence, the name “Bad Astronomy”). That is not to say that there are no intelligent, sincere people who might hold a particular postion (there might or might not be), just that the views of such people would not, typically, be prime examples of bad science, and so the BA would not choose to write a “bad science” blog about them.

For example, a blog devoted exclusively to discussing baseball players would not be accused of implying that every human being was a baseball player. Similarly, the fact that BA tends to write blogs about liars, the dim-witted, and those in denial does not imply that everyone belongs to one of those categories.

Has that anything to do with Chris Mooney’s humility and open-mindedness?

He must be the first author of a book on climate capable of hosting a good-natured debate between people of differing opinions.

If we all could learn from him, there would be far fewer heated discussions on AGW…and no BA blogs trying to argue that the Sun had little to do with recent climate variability

Besides, remember that uncertainty bites both ways. The uncertainty in cloud cover has just as much of a chance to make reality worse than the the predictions as it does to make it better.

Also, “initial data” is not a significant problem for global climate models. Predicting climate is a boundary-value problem. Initialization is more an issue for weather prediction models, as weather prediction is mostly an initial-value problem.

Thus, it is not so much a case of “gabage in, garbage out” as “larger uncertainties in, larger error bars out.” One nice thing about the climate models is that we can improve and refine them as we learn more.

Sorry Jane Jackson too - I meant Janet Jackson - and incidentally as I saw it that wasnt even her fault but her male partners!

Really people - priorities :

A split second glimpse of pretty obscured breast (Shock Horror kiddies women have mamary glands! )

A consual sexual affair between consenting adults (albeit one’s a married president)

Or illegally invading a nation that posed you no real threat, occupying a nation that posed you no real threat, authorising torture, setting up secret jails and flying political prisoners there to be tortured, changing laws to remove the rights of .. well everybody ultimately …

Hmm .. I know which one I’d see as the real problem. I know which one I’d see as worthy of impeachment -and, incidentally, arrest and trial.

I meant to write : “It [the Anthropogenic Greenhouse Warming] is happening. We are at very least partly responsible, we do need to do something about it.

I’d suggest starting with impeaching the current President and his anti-science, anti-reality regieme & never voting Republican again … ”

There is a very strong, very unfortunate strand of anti-intellectualism, anti-science prejudice in American culture.

Its always been there (from the old frontier mentality, from being founded by neurotic puritans ejected from Europe for being the past equivalent of door-knocking mormons, combination of those & the work of too many televangelists and too few erudite folks?) but in the years post - George Bush the Second (aka “Bush the mad”, “Dubya”, “Shrubya” & that Expletive Deleted!) it seems to have gotten considerably worse. About ten or even fifty times actually and so far despite the BA’s efforts it isn’t improving too quickly ..

There’s a lot I don’t understand about Americans but top of that list is why Bush II has yet to be impeached following lying his nation’s way into a 21st century Veitnam and (arguably? self-evidently more like!) comitting war crimes and crimes against humanity on numerous occassions (Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, spying on his citizens, invading Iraq, terrorising the rest of the planet etc ..) while a far better President, Bill Clinton, was impeached for lying about a domestic affair that hurt only a few people’s feelings …

I mean come on people! Wheres your sense of perspective? Where’s the outrage and resistence you’d expect from the Democrats? Why is it that a half-sec part-breast flash by Jane Jackson gets you frothing at the mouth but the needless destruction of a whole nation and the deaths of thousands of your troops and even more hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi’s is shrugged off so casually … ???

How can you go so far backwards with your mad semi-King George II after chucking out the mad King George III to begin your then promising existence? Incidentally what is it with the Bush clan’s lack of imagination when it comes to first names?
The nation that gave us Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, Martin Luther King, Woodrow Wilson, John Steinbeck, Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov is capable of so much better thinking and so much better behaviour. To see the nation that achieved the furthest exploration ever - the first Moon landing, probes to almost every planet (yes I still count Pluto - & Eris & Ceres as planets too!) - falling into medieval style religious fundamentalism and political intolerance is just so incredibly tragic and such a waste.