It's "hotel" (backwards)

The prosecution has to show that Z's statements were defamation, but even if they do, Z has a defense if he can show that the statements are true - at least that's my understanding, IANAL.

Yes, how convenient for the Venezuelans that their country was colonised by the Spanish rather than the English. Your point?

The Venezuelan president has a right a legal defense on unwarranted attacks on his reputation - if he is defamed then he can take the matter to court. This doesn't make him a dictator.

Zuloaga has a defense to the charges against him: if he can prove his statements were true, then he can get off. But if his allegations about Chavez are in fact just inflammatory lies, then he's in some serious legal shit.

I was there when that happened, and from my window the streets were EMPTY. This may come as a surprise to you, but normal people don't go to the streets during a coup. The streets were completely silent, except for some fireworks going off every now and then.

Sure ... the streets were empty except for the large crowd of angry people beseiging the presidential palace and demanding the return of the president.

See it here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5832390545689805144# though no doubt the machiavellian Chavez somehow faked this documentary from his prison cell in Fort Tiuna.

Maybe the streets outside your window were empty. Maybe "normal" people don't protest military coups. In which case thank god Venezuela is blessed with so many "abnormal" people prepared to stand up for their democratic rights and freedoms.

I'm confused. Can someone please explain to me why I was modded troll?

Because you got up some denialists nose?

You are dead right, though: in the past, acid rain and ozone-depletion denialists have made exactly that rhetorical move: acid rain was all a scam, and there's no proof CFCs had any effect on the ozone layer. Every time someone fucks up the atmosphere there'll be someone with an interest in denying that it's fucked up, and whenever the fuck-up is put right there'll be someone to say it never needed fixing.

Have you read the interview Phil Jones did with the BBC.

You mean this one?

Why yes, I have. You quite obviously have not or you wouldn't have come up with this bullshit:

He came clean and admitted that there is no evidence of man made global warming.

This can only be described as a blatant lie, given that when the BBC asked him "How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?", his reply was actually:

I'm 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 - [...] there's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.

Another one who can't read a simple graph! Your facetious graph actually purports to show that pirates prevent global warming.

Yes all true! This is why it was such an outrageous distortion for the denialist "news" website to have misquoted him as saying "there was no warming". Because he would have to have FAR LESS confidence in such a statement than in a statement that there was warming.

So what if 31k people are too stupid to read a simple graph? They expect to be taken seriously just because they claim to be "scientists"? Let them do some science and then I'll listen. Ignorance and prejudice masquerading as skepticism does not impress me.

If the North polar ice shrinks it is Global Warming.

Yet when the Antarctic ice grows it is Climate Change.

And? You expect the North and South Poles to behave the same way or something? Allow me to let you in on a little secret: the North Pole is in the middle of a sea, whereas the South Pole is in the middle of a continent. That, in a nutshell, is why the polar weather systems don't work the same way.

But rather than complain that the hypothesis of global warming isn't compatible with your preconceived ideas about how the world's weather systems work, why don't you take an empirical approach to the problem, like climatologists do and look at measurements of actual temperature. Surely, if the temperature records show the world is steadily getting colder, then that would disprove AGW?

But if you look at the temperature record then the fact is crystal clear: it is actually getting hotter.

The "Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995" headline is simply false. That's not what Professor Jones said at all, and in fact if you'd bothered to read the article you linked to, you'd know that.

Actually it has warmed, but he said the warming was not statistically significant at the 95% confidence level. I assume most people on Slashdot will know what that means, even if the headline writer at the Daily Mail (and you) do not.

Besides, if the implication is that their source of funding makes them unreliable, doesn't that mean that similar analysis of the funding for climatologists on the other side of the issue is also fair?

I don't think it's as simple as funding corrupting science. I don't believe in general that people believe what they are paid to believe. People may be brainwashed alright, and good brainwashing costs money, but I think it's simplistic to assume that people just believe what their source of funding wants them to believe. For instance, in many countries teachers and doctors are paid by local or national governments, but you won't find that makes them believe what those governments say. Very often they have agendas that are quite opposed, despite being 100% financially dependent.

Actually people tend to believe in the worth of what they themselves do. So there is a connection to funding; if you pay people to do X, they will believe that X is worthwhile. If you pay climatologists to do climatology, it will reinforce their belief that climatology is a worthwhile activity. But this doesn't in itself bias them to believe in AGW - the fact that climatologists overwhelmingly do believe in AGW is actually due to the fact that the results of their scientific study support that hypothesis very strongly.

With petroleum geologists (who often form part of the petroleum industry) I have no doubt that their personal involvement will tend to make them believe in the worth of petroleum prospecting, and tend to increase their ideological resistance to the idea of AGW, because a belief in AGW implies a belief that the petroleum industry is actually very hazardous on a global scale, and that's not compatible with an untroubled belief in one's own self-worth as a petroleum industry insider.

it might might be a good idea to consider the views of climatologists with some skepticism, for the same reasons you would the views of petroleum geologists

Well speaking personally, I really don't care either way about the official standpoint of a professional association of petroleum geologists. What possible relevance does it have? Do petroleum geologists have a relevant professional competence? Why should I concern myself with their opinion on climate change? Does their association's statement carry some special weight?

So the situation with respect to petroleum geologists and climatologists is not at all symmetrical, and it's a mistake to imagine that it's "even-handed" or "objective" to treat them with equal skepticism.

If they're still uncertain, why is is it so irrational for anyone else to be?

Gosh I really can't imagine why Petroleum Geologists might feel reluctant to accept that CO2 emissions are the cause of dangerous climate change.

If they're still uncertain, why is is it so irrational for anyone else to be?

Is it so rational to ignore the views of the vast majority of climatologists on climate change?