At some point the media should be called to task for saying something like: "The senator, a prominent round Earth skeptic...", when instead they should just say: "The senator is delusional." Keep in mind that this statement was prepared by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Their name is tarnished when science deniers co-opt it. It was not signed by climate scientists - rather it was signed by physicist and science communicators. (and of course the members of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry).

The third link, and the page that the statement was published on, is by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry . They feel that the media is giving undue credibility to the deniers by allowing them to co-opt their name. "The mission of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry is to promote scientific inquiry, critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims."

http://news.slashdot.org/story...

Hardly a reason to presume he is exaggerating.

How do you figure? Have you read the literature? Have you even read the relevant IPCC section?

Methane is a feedback of CO2. If the feedback is as strong as some say then CO2 could be game over. Also, you didn't read through to the other links. Clearly scientists are doing a good job of presenting the science even in the face of those who would distort it for political ends.

Is Hanson wrong? Should we expect to have seen a statistically significant change in storm intensity already? Did I not show many cases where scientists corrected journalists who overstated?

I think you may have tinted glasses. I'm a lay person and I certainly didn't get the impression that the sky was falling after reading Mann's essay. Regarding the two other links - Cook isn't a climate scientist and Hanson didn't say anything about tornadoes except that he had been in one and that heat is the fuel for tornados but that we don't yet know if frequency will increase and we didn't have enough data to tell if there has been a trend. On the other hand, look at these links:

David Archer on methane increase: "Is this bad news for global warming? Not really, because the one real hard fact that we know about atmospheric methane is that it’s concentration isn’t rising very quickly. Methane is a short-lived gas in the atmosphere, so to make it rise, the emission flux has to continually increase " - http://www.realclimate.org/ind...

What about that Arctic methane bomb? "Shakhova et al (2013) did not find or claim to have found a 50 Gt C reservoir of methane ready to erupt in a few years. That claim, which is the basis of the Whiteman et al (2013) $60 trillion Arctic methane bomb paper, remains as unsubstantiated as ever. - See more at: http://www.realclimate.org/ind...

The fact that the ice core records do not seem full of methane spikes due to high-latitude sources makes it seem like the real world is not as sensitive as we were able to set the model up to be. - See more at: http://www.realclimate.org/ind...

Here's William Connoly betting against an arctic death spiral (and trying to engage in a bet against arctic ice recovery): http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/...

Here is the head of the NASA climate team explaining why he and others publicly mocked a colleague during a presentation where the colleague suggested that we may be experiencing an arctic death spiral. His excuse seems to include the fact that he was mocking both sides (read further for examples): The negative engagement stemmed both from the “green” end (which we would characterize as “things are worse than they seem”) and from the “blue” end (“things are not as bad as they seem”). We were actively deflecting negative criticisms from both blue and green “wings” throughout both meetings. - https://drive.google.com/file/...

Good examples. For instance, in Michael Mann's piece he is correcting false representations of the IPCC report by journalists. He states: "The truth is that the impact of global warming on tornadoes remains uncertain, because the underlying science is nuanced and there are competing factors that come into play."

he goes on to say: "I pointed out to the journalist that there are two key factors: warm, moist air is favorable for tornadoes, and global warming will provide more of it. But important, too, is the amount of "shear" (that is, twisting) in the wind. And whether there will, in a warmer world, be more or less of that in tornado-prone regions, during the tornado season, depends on the precise shifts that will take place in the jet stream — something that is extremely difficult to predict even with state-of-the-art theoretical climate models."

He says that if he was a betting man he would give odds slight odds to the case for greater tornado activity: "So we've got one factor that is a toss-up, and another one that appears favorable for tornado activity. The combination of them is therefore slightly on the "favorable" side."

Very germane to this thread given that the deniers are somehow claiming that three years with low tornado activity somehow a failure of climate science. With such bad media reporting by the likes of WATTS and Muller. So yes - great examples of scientists correcting media reports that err in either direction.

Why yes, I am a liberal arts major, who studied classical logic, among other things. I was responding to the assertion that 'most' liberal arts majors ended up as lowly restaurant workers. I countered that by asserting a) that restaurant workers are not so lowly as characterised; b) that drawing general conclusions about people's prospects based on their education does not bear out, particularly where some of the more respected and influential jobs are concerned; and c) that in a number of cases, a liberal arts education is a precursor to the kind of work that most people can only dream about.

You see, I was actually not making a positive argument so much as rebutting (and refuting) someone else's crass, inaccurate and unsubstantiated assertion that a liberal arts degree is valueless. Shocking, isn't it, to see a STEM major failing so badly at applying basic logic?

But yeah, the plural of anecdote is not always data.

P.S. For the humour-impaired: I'm a keyboard monkey, too. A liberal arts educated keyboard monkey.

Two things:

First - I supported myself for a decade working in bars and restaurants. There are more interesting people living interesting lives employed in that sector than just about any other.

Second - Ridley Scott went to art college. Peter Jackson was self-taught. James Cameron was a truck driver. The people who have done more to shape your vision than you're likely able to realise followed no discernible pattern of behaviour. I'd advise you to save your derision until someone's earned it.

Case in point: One 'liberal arts' friend of mine plays the king of the White Walkers on GoT. Another works on The Daily Show. How's your job look now, keyboard monkey?

Did a double major in Theatre and English Literature. After 20 years of gainful employment in systems software development and consulting, I'm now CTO at an international think tank. I also know the value of capitalisation and punctuation.

Short version: It's horses for courses; reflect carefully, then do what you feel is best. If you're smart, the real determining factor is how hard you're willing to work, and how well you continue to learn.

I'm not talking about the caricatures that they weave at WATTS.

In my experience they are very conservative and often do correct media reports that err in either direction.

Not sure about Al Gore, but the IPCC did not predict an increase in tornadoes over the last three years. General consensus is that we will have an increase in CAPE and a decrease in wind shear which will mean little or no change in the overall trend.

The consensus position (as stated in your linked article) is that an increase in CAPE and a decrease in wind shear will mean little change in the trend. Three years with little tornado activity hardly overthrows this consensus. Nor does a paper finding "a possible increase in the number of days supportive of tornadic storms."