Sheaf Saint

He waived any right to ever be taken seriously on the subject a few years ago when he posted a load of utter drivel copied and pasted from the Association of British Drivers website, and tried to pass it off as scientific fact.

You do realise that the vast majority of the authors who contribute to the IPCC reports give their time voluntarily, don't you? No, of course not. Yet you wilfully believe every word published by contrarian scientists who have been shown to have accepted funding from the fossil fuel industry. Maybe listen to your own advice in future. Coming from someone who metaphorically sticks his fingers in his ears and goes "LA-LA-LA" every time anyone provides some credible evidence to show his assertions are wrong, that is a spectacular lack of self-awareness. As I posted recently, I used to sit on your side of the fence a number of years ago. A 'sceptic', if you will. So I did read and research the subject - I studied for a degree in environmental science. And guess what? I came to the conclusion that my previous position was wrong, because the evidence for that was overwhelming.

You still don't get this do you. The 'low confidence' assessment in this instance relates solely to any change in global trends, and I have explained in my previous posts why this is so difficult to assess. This article explains it a little more clearly... "A direct link between climate change and drought is complicated by the many meteorological, hydrological, geological, and societal drivers that combine to cause droughts. However, there is increasing evidence that climate change is influencing rainfall patterns in many regions around the world." Hydrological drought, for example can be caused purely by over-abstraction of water and not related to lack of rainfall at all. Therefore, if any one country declares a drought incident, but it is a hydrological drought rather than a meteorological one, that still gets added to the 'number of droughts' statistics. Furthermore, as I said previously, different countries use different criteria to declare a drought incident. So it is virtually impossible to gather all the global data into one dataset and say with any great degree of confidence that the number of droughts as a result of climate change is increasing. But, again, that doesn't mean there isn't an increasing problem with drought around the world: "There is still low confidence that human influence has affected trends in meteorological droughts in most regions. However, there is medium confidence human influence has contributed to the severity of certain events with more detailed studies. There is also medium confidence that human-induced climate change has contributed to increasing trends in the probability or intensity of recent agricultural and ecological droughts." So yes, it is perfectly possible to say that there is low confidence in the change in trends globally but still be reasonably confident that impacts from climate-change related droughts are increasing. And yes, there has been an increase in the general level of confidence between AR5 and AR6, but Koonin does not acknowledge that and makes a false statement that AR6 basically says the same thing as AR5 in this respect, which it clearly doesn't if you actually bother to read it properly instead of just hanging on his every word because your pre-existing bias makes you want to believe everything he says.

If Downes really was as ill and lost as much weight as has been reported, then I very much doubt he will start anyway, regardless of Charles' performance in the last game.

Swansea won't care who they sell to as long as they get the best fee. Just because we poached their manager, they won't just refuse to deal with us again out of spite if it means losing out on £millions. What's more likely is that the player has already signalled through his agent that, for whatever reason, he doesn't want to come to us. Maybe Leeds are offering better personal terms than we would have, or maybe he didn't get on with Martin and doesn't want to play under him again. Who knows. If we really wanted him, and he really wants to come to us, then I'm sure we would be able to beat Leeds' offer, but I guess it all hinges on Che leaving first.

A couple of choice snippets from the GOT forum...

But goals breed confidence with strikers like that. Seen it loads of times over the years where a striker on a barren run, looking devoid of all confidence, gets a fortunate goal which has jump-started a run of good form. Yeah he will still have off days, as all strikers do, but the fact he has already got 3 goals to his name already this season will do wonders for his mindset. Also, both his penalties were well taken so you can't just discount them as 'fortunate'. That's disingenuous to say the least. If he can get back to the level he was playing at in his 28 goal season at Blackburn, which is entirely possible, then he will be a huge asset to us this season.

Urgh, you didn't read the IPCC report to understand the context did you. In the specific phrases that Kooning quoted, low confidence means low confidence in the likely changes in trend and attribution to a few specific weather and climate events, but not all. I'm not going to bother re-posting it if you're just not even going to read it. But there are numerous reasons why it is extremely difficult to gather the necessary data required to conclude anything greater than low confidence in some areas. Drought, in particular, is especially hard to quantify because it is a vague term that has different definitions in different regions, and is recorded and reported differently around the world. This severly hampers any efforts to build a robust dataset of global trends. When you add in to that the fact that it is all but impossible to directly attribute any one singular event to climate change, you cannot conclude any greater confidence. It doesn't actually prove that warming isn't happening or isn't causing an increase in impacts of dry weather events though. Take a look at the table of the different weather events in the AR5 report: It's interesting that Koonin very deliberatley cherry picked the events for which the assessment was low confidence (and for which the report gives clear explanations of the uncertainties resulting in this conclusion), and conveniently ignores all the others which are assessed as either medium confidence, likely, or very likely. Why do you think he did that? Wrong. See table above. In 2014 the IPCC conclcuded it was likely that there had been an increase in heavy precipitation events, and had medium confidence that this increase was attributable to human activity. I can only assume you are trying to make out that the IPCC's knowledge in this matter has gone from very low to nearly 100% in a short space of time, and that is somehow suspicious. But this statement is false. They don't know exactly what is going on, because no credible scientist would ever make such a claim, but they do now have much better data which has allowed for an assessment of greater likelihood/confidence than they were able to in 2013. This is from the AR6 report: "The frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation events have increased since the 1950s over most land area for which observational data are sufficient for trend analysis (high confidence), and human-induced climate change is likely the main driver. Human-induced climate change has contributed to increases in agricultural and ecological droughts in some regions due to increased land evapotranspiration (medium confidence). " So there has been a marked improvement in the scientific understanding since the previous assessment, but not one so large as you are trying to infer.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66599733 Wagner boss Prigozhin killed in plane crash in Russia

Except the main antagonists in this case are supposed to be old and mature enough to know better. I honestly can't work out why Soggy, Turks, Weston and Alex don't just all put each other on ignore and be done with it. Would make everyone (and I mean all forum users, not just them) much happier. Anyway, I'm stepping back now before yet another thread gets completely derailed.

No, I think it's immature to say that you won't stop with the childish posting until the other person does. Which it obviously is. That's basically the equivalent of two schoolboys getting told off and defending themselves by saying "But he started it sir!" This isn't the school playground. And I know from our previous conversations that, like me, you are a man in your mid-40s. Acting like a butthurt schoolkid because someone else, whose opinion you clearly give no respect anyway said some nasty things about you doesn't suit you.

I was playing the ball Turks, not the man.

Oh so you're playing the victim now are you? Buctootim's post wasn't patronising, it was just pointing out the irony of a blatant display of immaturity in a post from someone complaining about another poster's immaturity.

Either this is some top level trolling, or it's a spectacular lack of self awareness. I genuinely can't work out which though. Despite your long and illustrious history of the former, I think I'm gonna go for the latter.

He doesn't help himself with his posting style, it's true. But there are certain posters on here who cannot refrain from responding to virtually everything he posts with childish ad hominem attacks, regardless of the content of the post. They are all as bad as each other, and it's getting really fucking tiresome now.

Didn't bother researching properly how to pronounce Hereford though did they, so RDN's character actually came across looking a bit of a knob.

It's a thoughtful and reasoned response, granted, and I like the way they are all very respectful to each other in their choice of words, but he doesn't 'debunk' them at all. He just falls back on the same arguments he makes in the book, and blatantly ignores half of their criticisms. It's all very well saying he shows links to the IPCC report to back up his claims, but all he does is take a few quotes out of context and presents them as if they serve as evidence to support his main claim that the science is less settled than some parties want us to believe it is. For example, from the IPCC AR5 report, he quotes: “. . . low confidence in a global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since the middle of the 20th century . . .” On the face of it, this looks to the layman that things aren't as bad as is being made out. But he fails to expand on the reasoning given in the AR5 report for that low confidence assessment and the other surrounding context: "There is low confidence in a global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall), owing to lack of direct observations, dependencies of inferred trends on the index choice and geographical inconsistencies in the trends. However, this masks important regional changes and, for example, the frequency and intensity of drought have likely increased in the Mediterranean and West Africa and likely decreased in central North America and northwest Australia since 1950". He then quotes similar statements regarding low confidence in floods, small-scale weather phenomena, and intensity of tropical cyclones, but again utterly fails to provide any context or reasoning for those confidence assessments (such as the inherent difficulties in gathering the data necessary to conclude anything greater than low confidence). He then goes on to say that "The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) says very much the same things". Except it doesn't... " Human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. Evidence of observed changes in extremes such as heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their attribution to human influence, has strengthened since AR5." IPCC AR6 Working Group 1: Summary for Policymakers | Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis The narrative he is trying to create is that the overall confidence in the assertion that AGW is happening is lower than it actually is, that nothing is as bad as is being made out, and that we've got loads of time to solve this so we might as well keep on burning fossil fuels as long as we like. He's wrong. I take on board his line about global energy infrastructure not being ready to transition to net zero instantly, and the undoubted problems that the global economy would suffer if we tried to do it too quickly, but he goes too far the other way and his blasé attitude and lack of urgency about the situation is disconcerting.

A lengthy, but interesting dissection of the numerous fallacies in Koonin's book... Debunked? A review of Steven Koonin’s book ‘Unsettled?’ – Debunking Denial

Yes, the world was warming prior to the industrial revolution as we were still coming out of an ice age, but the drastic increase in atmospheric CO2 over the last 150 years has accelerated that process and caused the planet to warm up at an unprecedented rate. How, after all these years, do you still not get this? You think posting an old photo with some dubious lines based on unknown data drawn on it disproves that? If you really want to see some evidence that human activity is the primary cause of the current rate of warming, have a read of this study from 2006. It confirms that the vast majority of energy in the atmosphere at the Earth's surface corresponds exactly to the wavelength at which it is captured by CO2. So we know that levels of atmospheric CO2 have risen markedly due to human emissions, we know that higher concentrations of CO2 in air lead to greater heat retention, and we have firm evidence that the majority of the energy being stored in the atmosphere is being captured by CO2.

Might give us the chance to resurrect that Jason Puncheon song though.

Do you actually have any idea how much of a massive prick you have made yourself look with this post? Today's performance from England (and, indeed, Australia) could never be described as "slow ponderous rubbish" by anybody who wasn't too dismissive of the women's game to watch it.

Which media outlet do we think will be the first to use the headline "South Downes"?

Or perhaps he just thinks he's better than he actually is and he's being unrealistic with his wage demands because someone at Saints, in their infinite wisdom, gave him a bumper contract that he didn't deserve.

It wasn't just those posts that you deleted though.

Plenty do. They're just not as vocal as the ones who constantly feel the need to remind everyone else that they don't.