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3. the debate is over!

blah blah blah insert copy+pasted copyrighted rightwing lunatic conspiracy theories about climate science here blah blah blah

(I dislike having to ban a legitimate user, even a very rarely active one, but Strmfshr seems to have let his account be taken over by his banned friend Trtklr, who is using it to harass us, so I don't have much choice. --Jason)

This just can't be!!! Someone who rambles on longer than Oldredbarn!?

Here's a quote from today in the Caddis Flies of Northern Michigan thread by who else but Old Red Barn..."That's what's great about this sport...There is room for just about everyone's fantasies about how this old world works and it does work, just enough times, to convince us we are on to something...Even when we are flat out wrong in our conclusions!"

Maybe we should make a rule that if it can't be said in just two paragraphs it just don't need to be said! I'll sign on to that...Honest!

Old Red Barn

Of course you will, Spence. But, who am I to talk!

Roger,

You know I could maybe write like a Faulkner or Joyce and make those two paragraphs run on and on and on...He, he...I think it was Joyce's "Dubliner's" that started in mid sentence and the last sentence of the book was the first half of that sentence so it's one big circle... You and I could learn something from that man! His "Ulysses" is a hugh book and it's just one day in Dublin from the perspective of many folks...We are rank amateurs my friend!

How are things in the northwest? Are you able to make it to any Olympic events? I was in Washington in 1973 when I was 19 on my way to Alaska. I just watched the Swedes (Half the team plays for my Wings) beat the Germans in hockey.

Well that's pretty close to my two paragraphs. Ciao!

Spence

Spence-

Things are good in the PNW. So far, we've had a really mild winter. Amazingly, the lawn has even started growing and greening up this past week. Regarding the Olympic Games hosted by our northern neighbors, probably like you, I am perfectly happy to sit back and watch the events from the comfort of my easy chair.

Best regards,

Taxon and I are biding our time until online aquatic insect identification earns its rightful place in the Winter Olympics.

Jason,

Online hell! We want your nerdy little asses in waders in the middle of a freezing cold stream! Little pith-helmuts on, magnifiers hanging from your necks, butterfly nets in one hand and a stream seine in another...Gonzo sitting in a Laz-y-boy on the bank leafing through a copy of B.D.Burks', "Ephemeroptera of Illinois"...

"Ladies and Gentlemen it's now time for the benthic drift portion of our competition..." TV announcers voice... "This should be very exciting! Right Matt? That's right Louis! We are going to see some top-notch collecting here today. We have the top entomologists from around the country gathered together here today in one location..."

Voices from in front of the television...

"Hey Tony! Could you hand me the remote? Grab me a beer while your up! Man! There's got to be some hockey on this dam thing somewhere!"

"Got it Spence...Hey you want another slice of pizza?"

Honestly, I was going to suggest banning strmfshr for letting trtklr hijack his computer and I was wondering if you might be thinking the same thing. THANK YOU.

Did anything that he posted make sense? Climate change deniers seem to be jumping all over the email scandal as if it PROVES there's no such thing as global warming (oh, and lest I forget it's an evil plot by Al Gore to take over the world), but what I've heard is that this is merely a single data set that was manipulated and not even really in the way that the nutcases are actually describing. I can't read right-wing bullsh*t without wanting to shoot my computer, and since I can't afford to replace it for a good long time, I won't be reading any of this fecal discharge. But did anyone else bother to read it to see if there were any valid points?? Right-wingers are not known for their promotion of sound science, e.g. the Bush-Cheney administration which I need not describe here. Jason?

Jonathon

Jon,

You didn't miss anything you haven't heard droned over and over again ad nauseam...The amount of carbon being released on both sides of this issue is going to cause global warming on it's own...We are going to have to invent something that will strap to everyone's mouth that will put all this "hot-air" to some sort of good use! You are the enviro guy...Get to work on this...We will make trillions, you and I!

Spence

I followed the scandal very closely, and there's absolutely nothing to it. There aren't even any serious accusations of scientific errors being investigated.

The biggest fuss was about what the emails referred to as "using Mike's 'Nature' trick to hide the decline." The climate change deniers and much of the media ran with the suggestion that the "decline" was a decline in global temperatures, and that they were somehow trying to hide it from the public. In reality, the "decline" was in one series of tree ring temperature data that isn't reliable for the latest few decades. It was "hidden" in plain sight by putting it next to the actual thermometer temperature record for those years, on the same graph, clearly labeled. What the statement really meant--and there is no disputing this--is that he put the apparent-but-artificial temperature decline in the tree ring series in context by showing it next to the real thermometer temperature data.

Of course, that real explanation was rarely mentioned on the news. This is why I think the mainstream media is so incredibly biased toward right-wingers. They aren't trying to be biased (except for Fox of course). Most reporters are probably personally left of center. But their style of "balanced" reporting, in which they neutrally parrot each side's talking points with equal weight in "he-said, she-said" fashion, plays right into the hands of whichever side does the most egregious lying. Their bias toward headline-grabbing controversy also works in the right wing's favor. A proverb sometimes attributed to Mark Twain says, "A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." The media's job should be to research the truth and use it to stamp out lies. Instead they report the truth and the lies as equals and say things like, "We report, you decide." Then they have pundits come on to shout the lies for half an hour at the top of their lungs.

There was absolutely nothing even remotely sketchy about the "Mike's Nature trick" email. It's not a matter of opinion, not open for personal interpretation of any kind. It was just a choice of words in a private email that would make perfect sense to the recipient, but looks awful when pulled out of context (by illegal hackers, no less). It was picked up by useless right-wing demagogues and paraded around as some massive scientific fraud, and the media not only let that happen, they helped out! They went on for days and days like this was some sort of big controversy, parroting the out-of-context line for discussion without any hint at what it really meant. There really should be hundreds of reporters fired for being complicit in that nonsense, but unfortunately it's just par for the course.

I would also point out that there was one thing that at first looked to me like malfeasance on the part of the CRU scientists: their dodging of Freedom of Information Act requests. Then I learned that a climate denier website had organized a campaign to bombard them with frivolous, bad-faith FOIA requests. Each request takes many hours to respond to, and they were receiving several per day, most of them for data that were actually already publicly available somewhere. It was a legal red-tape equivalent of a computer hacker's Denial of Service attack, in which they have a network of thousands of virus-infected computers bombard a website with constant requests and crash its servers. I can't blame them for dealing the the FOIA requests the way they did, given that situation.

Thanks for the clarification, Jason. My initial instincts on this one were right after all. And I do think you are spot-on concerning the so-called "liberal media" complicity in this. You know, maybe reporters have gotten the same wussy paranoia at being called "liberals" that the Democrats in Congress have so now they think they have to "balance" out their reporting by towing the conservative line - kinda like they did when Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & Co.(Inc.) wanted to invade Iraq and all of those pussies went along with it instead of asking the tough questions about just why the hell do we need to do this...

Here's a quote that I feel is most appropriate - it is attributed to Einstein by my old (and possibly future) boss:

"Intelligence has its limits, but ignorance is infinite."

Jonathon

P.S. Even so noble a tool as the Freedom of Information Act can be misused by the wrong people. Just as we fly fishers could destroy our own favorite resource if we always kept all of our fish...

i guess i don't get it here. i've been watching conversations and it all seems good. i did see strmfshr's original post. why edit, why ban? those who are idiots will show themselves.

troutnut those were some long paragraphs.

Hi Flyflier, your question is a reasonable one, so I'll give my best answer and see what you and others think. I believe many of us who frequent this site don't care to have the site littered with the kind of disrespectful, illogical, and poorly thought out comments that Strmfshr was posting. He actually taunted Jason once saying he'd post anything he wanted to and that Jason had no right to, nor could he, stop it. Most on this site try to hold themselves to a reasonably high standard of commentary and of mutual respect. We tend to exercise a certain level of caution about making claims that can't be supported or about being blatantly disrespectful. The only ones I've seen banned here were either spammers or people who refused to adhere to these tenets. I appreciate Jason for exercising his right as the creator of the site to promote a positive and informative tone here, and I support him.

I second those comments. The banned individuals were highly disrespectful (at times downright insulting) to Jason and many others on this site, and their postings were pure drivel when it came to anything political (and they didn't seem to want to talk about fly fishing anymore). I believe they were just trying to incite us and get a rise out of us (which they certainly did out of me, for which I can only partly apologize), not contribute to a polite conversation relating to not only fly fishing but other issues that impact our sport. There are certain people in this world who get off on being smartasses and troublemakers because it gives them a sense of power - which means they must feel powerless in some way, perhaps do to a low sense of self-esteem. Their only way of making a difference in this world is to cause problems, and people (if I can call them that) like that deserve to be shut out of ANY conversation. I strongly respect Jason's actions, and, after all, it is HIS website!

Jonathon

While I do respect Jason's right to take action in the manner he did, I think you guys need to stop taking yourselves too seriously. Posts like this are not even acknowledged on other forums, and "perps" lose interest like a big brown at the tail end of a hex hatch.

Strmfshr's original post wasn't an "original" post; it was copied and pasted word-for-word from a rightwing website. That's a copyright infringement and it's not legal for me to allow it to say on the site. The ban is because the poster (mostly under his previously banned name) has done this same thing over and over and over.