Jane Q. Public writes "Christ Turney, a climate researcher at University of New South Wales, and some other researchers chartered a ship to go to Antarctica to further their Anthropogenic Global Warming ("climate change") research. The expedition, consisting of 74 researchers and crew, radioed for help on Christmas day, stating that they are trapped in the ice. A chinese ice breaker called "Snow Dragon" came within a few miles of the stuck ship but had to turn back. The researchers and crew are now hoping that the ice breaker Aurora Australis, out of Australia, will be able to reach them." [Jane Q. Public, 2013-12-28]

As Tom Curtis noted:

"There is an irony about the various sailors, scientist, reporters and tourists currently being trapped in sea ice. They are not trapped because of the growth of Antarctic Sea Ice. Although the current Antarctic SI is 1.5 million square kilometers greater than 1979-2008 mean for this time of year, it is nonetheless melting rapidly, including just north of Commonwealth Bay where the Shokalskey is trapped. Rather, it is trapped as a consequence of portions of ice shelves breaking of the Antarctic coast line. Specifically, in 2010, Iceberg B-9B, a remnant of a calving event on the Ross Ice Shelf in 1987, collided with the tongue of the Metz Glacier, breaking it of. The debris from that collision, it appears, has remained more or less in situe for the last three years, until b winds shifted out from the terminus of the Metz Glacier towards Commonwealth Bay, trapping the Shokalskey. This is described in more detail on the mission blog."

Tom also noted that the mission's 2nd goal was to "explore changes in ocean circulation caused by the growth of extensive fast ice and its impact on life in Commonwealth Bay."

For some strange reason, the CFACT link Jane provided tells a different story.

Lonny Eachus responds to a tweet using the acronym RWNJ with a rant about "Nut Jobs" (NJ):

That is what ideologues do. They can't stand to even hear you disagree. THOSE are real NJ, and why they must not win. Another example: Reddit just banned any discussion that does not agree with "climate change" from their science forum. They claimed that "deniers" were rude, aggressive, and not actually discussing science. Funny, but I've seen exactly the opposite: THEIR "side" doing that. [Lonny Eachus, 2013-12-17]

... says Lonny Eachus, who is rude, aggressive, and doesn't actually discuss science. Perhaps Lonny Eachus refers to Jane Q. Public's rude, aggressive comments that don't actually discuss science. After all, Jane insists he's NOT a contrarian, so maybe Lonny Eachus wrongly thinks Jane Q. Public is on the side of mainstream science?

Or maybe Lonny refers to my visit to WUWT, when David M. Hoffer suggested at 3:16pm that I should be referred to as "it". His suggestion obviously appealed to ATheoK, who agreed at 7:44pm that I don't deserve a human pronoun. Other WUWT commenters called me a corrupt lying Godless Anti-American murderer, which WUWT regular geronimo found so distasteful that he assumed Anthony Watts would apologize... until I pointed out that Watts already knew and had responded by banning me from WUWT. Maybe Lonny Eachus wrongly thinks Anthony Watts and WUWT commenters are on the side of mainstream science?

Or maybe Lonny Eachus refers to Foxgoose whose egregious victimization rippled back in time. Or maybe Lonny Eachus refers to Geoff Chambers's blog, where commenters like Foxgoose called me and others lying borderline insane cult member guard dogs committing savage attacks. Maybe Lonny Eachus wrongly thinks Foxgoose and Geoff Chambers are on the side of mainstream science?

Here's what Dr. Nathan Allen, reddit science forum moderator, actually said. My emphasis:

...no topic consistently evokes such rude, uninformed, and outspoken opinions as climate change.

Instead of the reasoned and civil conversations that arise in most threads, when it came to climate change the comment sections became a battleground. Rather than making thoughtful arguments based on peer-reviewed science to refute man-made climate change, contrarians immediately resorted to aggressive behaviors. On one side, deniers accused any of the hard-working scientists whose research supported and furthered our understanding of man-made climate change of being bought by "Big Green." On the other side, deniers were frequently insulted and accused of being paid to comment on reddit by "Big Oil."

After some time interacting with the regular denier posters, it became clear that they could not or would not improve their demeanor. These problematic users were not the common "internet trolls" looking to have a little fun upsetting people. Such users are practically the norm on reddit. These people were true believers, blind to the fact that their arguments were hopelessly flawed, the result of cherry-picked data and conspiratorial thinking. They had no idea that the smart-sounding talking points from their preferred climate blog were, even to a casual climate science observer, plainly wrong. They were completely enamored by the emotionally charged and rhetoric-based arguments of pundits on talk radio and Fox News.

As a scientist myself, it became clear to me that the contrarians were not capable of providing the science to support their "skepticism" on climate change. The evidence simply does not exist to justify continued denial that climate change is caused by humans and will be bad. There is always legitimate debate around the cutting edge of research, something we see regularly. But with climate change, science that has been established, constantly tested, and reaffirmed for decades was routinely called into question.

Over and over, solid peer-reviewed science was insulted as corrupt, while blog posts from fossil-fuel-funded groups were cited as objective fact. Worst of all, they didn't even get the irony of quoting oil-funded blogs that called university scientists biased.

The end result was a disservice to science and to rational exploration, not to mention the scholarly audience we are proud to have cultivated. When 97 percent of climate scientists agree that man is changing the climate, we would hope the comments would at least acknowledge if not reflect such widespread consensus. Since that was not the case, we needed more than just an ad hoc approach to correct the situation.

The answer was found in the form of proactive moderation. About a year ago, we moderators became increasingly stringent with deniers. When a potentially controversial submission was posted, a warning would be issued stating the rules for comments (most importantly that your comment isn't a conspiracy theory) and advising that further violations of the rules could result in the commenter being banned from the forum.

As expected, several users reacted strongly to this. As a site, reddit is passionately dedicated to free speech, so we expected considerable blowback. But the widespread outrage we feared never materialized, and the atmosphere greatly improved.

We discovered that the disruptive faction that bombarded climate change posts was actually substantially smaller than it had seemed. Just a small handful of people ran all of the most offensive accounts. What looked like a substantial group of objective skeptics to the outside observer was actually just a few bitter and biased posters with more opinions then evidence.

Like reddit, I've also noticed that contrarian s use gende r-bendin g sockpuppets to spread their misinformation.

But that's not the real point. The point is this: if somebody is name-calling and being rude and disruptive, then ban them... NO MATTER WHAT "SIDE" they are on. Instead, they're simply censoring the entire viewpoint, legitimate science or not. :o/ [Lonny Eachus, 2013-12-17]

As Dr. Allen made clear, reddit decided not to lend their soapbox to rude commenters who could not or would not improve their demeanor. This isn't censorship any more than the LA Time s not printing contrarian letters. Lonny Eachus and Jane Q. Public can still keep staining their legacies by spreading civilization-paralyzing misinformation, but nobody else is obliged to lend them a soapbox.

Jane Q. Public writes "Christ Turney, a climate researcher at University of New South Wales, and some other researchers chartered a ship to go to Antarctica to further their Anthropogenic Global Warming ("climate change") research. The expedition, consisting of 74 researchers and crew, radioed for help on Christmas day, stating that they are trapped in the ice. A chinese ice breaker called "Snow Dragon" came within a few miles of the stuck ship but had to turn back. The researchers and crew are now hoping that the ice breaker Aurora Australis, out of Australia, will be able to reach them." [Jane Q. Public, 2013-12-28]

As Tom Curtis noted:

"There is an irony about the various sailors, scientist, reporters and tourists currently being trapped in sea ice. They are not trapped because of the growth of Antarctic Sea Ice. Although the current Antarctic SI is 1.5 million square kilometers greater than 1979-2008 mean for this time of year, it is nonetheless melting rapidly, including just north of Commonwealth Bay where the Shokalskey is trapped. Rather, it is trapped as a consequence of portions of ice shelves breaking of the Antarctic coast line. Specifically, in 2010, Iceberg B-9B, a remnant of a calving event on the Ross Ice Shelf in 1987, collided with the tongue of the Metz Glacier, breaking it of. The debris from that collision, it appears, has remained more or less in situe for the last three years, until b winds shifted out from the terminus of the Metz Glacier towards Commonwealth Bay, trapping the Shokalskey. This is described in more detail on the mission blog."

Tom also noted that the mission's 2nd goal was to "explore changes in ocean circulation caused by the growth of extensive fast ice and its impact on life in Commonwealth Bay."

For some strange reason, the CFACT link Jane provided tells a different story.

... I was probably arguing against something other than what you actually meant. ... I think we are again discussing two different things. I wasn't trying to argue that creationism was falsifiable. Or any of those other things you have brought in to the conversation. ... you have done an awful lot of arguing over things I have NOT said.

No, I debunked these things you said:

... All currently known life forms have structures based on DNA or RNA. This is a fact. Creationists argue that because we know of no actual examples of the evolution of DNA or RNA from simpler molecules, then DNA (or RNA at least) were created and did not evolve. NOTE: I do NOT claim it is evidence of creation, only that it is evidence that can reasonably be interpreted as supporting a creationist's arguments. (By the way: the claim of the existence of organisms that use arsenic rather than phosphorus has not been substantiated.) Now, let's be clear: I also did not and do not claim that this argument is sound. I am simply saying that it is not an inherently silly argument, it is based on genuine observable evidence, and I am not aware of counter-evidence. (Though I do not deny that some may exist. The very same evidence might be interpreted as supporting the argument for evolution, for all I know, but I am not sure how at this time.) Therefore I have found a bit of evidence that supports the creationism argument. [Jane Q. Public, 201]

You were wrong. Again. You didn't find "a bit of evidence that supports the creationism argument." As I explained, you found evidence that supports evolution.

In the case of the evolution argument, I have nothing further to say after this. My original comment was clear and I stick by it for, as I explained to you very plainly before, statistical reasons. You may have misunderstood what I meant, and that happens. But getting into whether creationism is falsifiable, or what your arguments are for or against it, stray far from the mark. They have next to nothing to do with my original point, which was that very few areas of science (or any ideology, for that matter) have ALL of the evidence on their side.

You were wrong. Again. You didn't find "a bit of evidence that supports the creationism argument." As I explained, you found evidence that supports evolution.

... my original comment was: "some facts exist that are evidence of creationism". (Or close enough as makes no difference.) But that was all I meant. I said or implied nothing else; only that some facts can support the argument of creationism... whether it is valid "science", or not. Something they can use to argue. I didn't even say that the argument had to hold up under scrutiny... only that there is evidence for it.

Thanks for finally being honest. You're not interested in valid science, just something you can use to argue, even if it doesn't hold up under scrutiny. You've used this "principle of superficiality" to spread civilization-paralyzing misinformation which seems plausible at first glance to non-scientists, but doesn't hold up under scrutiny. In fact, I said as much last year:

"... each contrarian is more effective at superficial "science communication" than the average scientist. ... Once you get a contrarian started, a stream of regurgitated-but-superficially-plausible nonsense spews forth. Just consider Jane Q. Public. ..."

... why you insist on continuing to bring these things [dark matter] up after they have been beaten into the ground baffles me. ... indeed the matter is hardly settled now. ... I have explained this to you several times now and reopening the subject does not in any way add to your prestige.

You reopened the subject of dark matter, and keep trying to reopen it by claiming that "the matter is hardly settled now." It's even more ironic that you're lecturing me about dark matter's timeline, when I already debunked your claim that "string theory is one of the pillars upon which dark matter theory is formed" by pointing out that this would've required a time machine. That link also shows why your "retractions" are just insincere chaff; your "retraction" lasted for 5 minutes before you continued to imply that the astrophysicists who overwhelmingly consider dark matter more plausible than MOND are "confused".

"Integrity" is WHY I haven't retracted some things you have asked me to retract. First you would have to show they are false. Which more often than not, you completely failed to do. ... When I have been shown to be wrong, I have posted retractions. (Other people can attest to this. You are not the only person to read my posts.) But the former is a prerequisite for the latter.

You claimed that some facts support the creationist position, which is wrong. Maybe the closest you can come to a retraction is saying that "maybe" your first example was bad, and maybe that falls short of a sincere retraction. But your second example was also bad. You obviously don't have the integrity to even admit that "maybe" your second example was bad too. Despite the fact that both your examples actually were bad, you still don't have the integrity to retract your absurd claim that some facts support the creationist position.

And again, I debunked the misinformation that you and Lonny Eachus were spreading about Cowtan and Way 2013. If you actually do have a shred of intellectual integrity, feel free to retract your misinformation.

First, you are not using technically accurate terms. DNA is DNA. RNA is RNA. Different sequences of DNA are possible and have been observed. Same for RNA. To date, however, no substitutes for DNA or RNA have been confirmed.

Your accusation is baseless; I haven't confused DNA and RNA. In fact, I've explained how different types of shadow biospheres might or might not keep the same RNA bases while using different DNA bases.

The notion that different molecules could be used as DNA analogs is certainly testable.

Yes, that's exactly my point. That's one reason why evolution is testable science, while creationism is religion.

In fact, if you recall, there was a recent claim that some bacteria used arsenic instead of phosphorus in their DNA... which would make it "not DNA". I am not aware of any reason to believe that "alternate DNA" would be any more or less susceptible to evolution than our known DNA. Therefore this hypothesis is just as testable as the other. The only difference is that it is not currently, actively testable given our state of technology, and we currently know of no examples.

Nobody's suggesting that alternate DNA would be any more or less susceptible to evolution. I'm just pointing out that we couldn't have evolved from creatures using alternative DNA bases. That's one reason why evolution is testable science, while creationism is religion. As I've explained:

"You’re talking about a shadow biosphere. It’s possible that abiogenesis happened several times, so finding two types of DNA wouldn’t falsify evolution. What I’m talking about is the scenario where every species in existence has a different set of nucleic acids in their DNA. Millions of separate abiogenesis events would completely destroy evolution. Ergo, it’s possible to find evidence which would disprove evolution. Ergo, evolution is falsifiable science."

Frankly I am not convinced that your argument "evolution is only compatible with 'all life uses the same DNA'", is any more plausible than the argument that "evolution is possible given a suitable alternative analog of DNA". The only difference I see is that only one of them is testable today. The flap over the "arsenic DNA" in Mono Lake shows that the other idea is at least plausible to many scientists.

Of course it's plausible. That's what I've been saying for years, so you obviously didn't understand my point. If every species in existence had different DNA bases, life on Earth couldn't have had a common ancestor. Again, this is one reason why evolution is testable science, while creationism is religion. As I've tweeted:

Creationism isn't even wrong. Evolution is science: it can be falsified by Precambrian apes, or if all species had different DNA bases, etc.

Just as, for years, there were no known methods to test for the existence of dark matter. Yet that did not stop many scientists from creating models based on it, nor did it get them ejected from the halls of science.

Here we go again. As I've repeatedly (and apparently pointlessly) explained to you, the first method of testing for the existence of dark matter was developed in 1933. I then tried to explain some of the following tests, but obviously I would've had better luck trying to educate my coffee table. At least it doesn't accuse me of being a "flaming, large-bore asshole"...

I probably won't keep asking you to retract anything, because you obviously don't have the necessary intellectual integrity. But if you're going to keep digging these absurd holes... shouldn't you limit yourself to digging one ridiculous hole at a time?

Well, it was a retraction of that example. I'm not going to retract my more general claim, because it is not incorrect. And you are already well aware that statistically speaking, it is almost certainly true.

Maybe that was a bad retraction, and maybe you're not retracting your more general claim even though it's absurdly incorrect, and maybe you're accusing me of being "well aware" that your more general claim is "almost certainly true" even though I've been emphatically denying your absurd claim.

... All currently known life forms have structures based on DNA or RNA. This is a fact. Creationists argue that because we know of no actual examples of the evolution of DNA or RNA from simpler molecules, then DNA (or RNA at least) were created and did not evolve. NOTE: I do NOT claim it is evidence of creation, only that it is evidence that can reasonably be interpreted as supporting a creationist's arguments. (By the way: the claim of the existence of organisms that use arsenic rather than phosphorus has not been substantiated.) Now, let's be clear: I also did not and do not claim that this argument is sound. I am simply saying that it is not an inherently silly argument, it is based on genuine observable evidence, and I am not aware of counter-evidence. (Though I do not deny that some may exist. The very same evidence might be interpreted as supporting the argument for evolution, for all I know, but I am not sure how at this time.) Therefore I have found a bit of evidence that supports the creationism argument.

No, you haven't, and you obviously didn't read the link I just gave you:

It's strange that all life we've studied uses the same DNA bases– a crucial requirement of common descent. However, a Creator who wanted to leave an indisputable proof of intelligent design could have given every species a unique biochemistry that couldn't possibly have arisen through common descent. This is why I was confused when Brett mentioned Message Theory. It seems like the Creator either used evolution to create life (Catholics take this position) or the Creator manually fine-tuned all life on Earth to look like it had evolved from a common ancestor even though it really didn't. Again, notice that intelligent design is compatible with any experimental outcome, whereas evolution would have been abandoned if every other creature we studied had different nucleic acids.

Your second example was actually bad too, because it shows evolution is falsifiable science while creationism is just religion. Try again.

Yes, or no. Do you deny that given the size of the body of evidence, the probability of ALL available evidence being against the ideas of creationism or "young Earth" is very close to zero? Do you deny that a corollary if this is that SOME evidence must almost certainly be supportive of creationism?

Yes, I deny that any fact supports young earth or old earth creationism. Yes, I deny that there is any evidence supporting young earth or old earth creationism. I'm a denier.

You've repeatedly claimed that some facts support the creationist position. Again, you can either find an example that isn't ridiculously wrong, retract your absurd claim, or keep pulling a "Jane" by doing neither. Since you probably won't surprise us on this account, perhaps lowered expectations are in order. Earlier, you claimed:

Just one example: The fact that radiometric dating relies on certain assumptions has been one of their favorite talking points. Are those assumptions reasonable? I think so. But they ARE assumptions, and that is a fact. Therefore, there do exist facts that can be said to support (or at least not refute) the creationists' arguments. ...

I replied by saying "No, isochron dating only relies on nuclear decay rates being constant, which has been confirmed by SN1987a, etc. Try again." and your response was "Okay, maybe it was a bad example."

Any example may be a bad example, so that wasn't a retraction. Your example actually was a bad example, and anyone who understood my point would have the intellectual integrity to admit that without weasel words. So perhaps my website was down; here's the relevant part:

Isochron dating results of old rocks depend only on nuclear decay rates being constant in time. Isochron dating isn’t dependent on initial quantities of elements, and the analysis method automatically produces error bars on the obtained age. The oldest rocks we have agree that the Earth is 4.55 billion years old, plus or minus 100 million years or so.

Just to be clear, we can’t be sure that nuclear decay rates are exactly constant. But experiments have placed constraints on the size of any variation in decay rates:

1. Supernovae produce many radioactive elements which slowly decay after the explosion. At first they shine brightly in a spectroscopically unique manner, but over the course of several weeks they fade to half their previous brightness. The amount of time it takes the brightness to fade is a direct measurement of the nuclear decay rate. The best example is supernova 1987A, which lies ~169,000 LY away. That means that when scientists looked at that light in 1987, they were measuring the nuclear decay rate as it was around 169,000 years ago. The results were experimentally indistinguishable from current decay rates, and have been confirmed by similar experiments on SN1991T, which is 60,000,000 light years away.
2. The Oklo natural nuclear reactor left evidence that can be used to determine the fine structure constant and neutron capture rates, both intimately entwined with quantum mechanics’ predictions of nuclear decay rates. This experiment is more ambiguous and as a result the error bars are much larger than the SN1987A constraint, but it’s also consistent with a constant nuclear decay rate. Since the Oklo reactor was active 1.8 billion years ago, the Oklo evidence only supports a change in the fine structure constant of one part in 10 million over that timespan.
3. The increase in nuclear decay rates necessary to increase the “apparent age” of rocks from thousands to billions of years is enormous. This decay rate would make all the mildly radioactive elements in the Earth decay faster, releasing enough heat to melt the crust. It would still be molten to this day unless God made a cosmically sized refrigerator to cool it down fast enough to fit into the creationist timeline.
4. Any change in nuclear decay rates would have to affect all types of nuclear decay identically, otherwise isotopes that decay by different mechanisms (alpha, beta, neutron emission, etc.) would’ve decayed at different rates. If these rates changed differently, it would cause isochron dates of the same object but using different isotopes to disagree. To the best of my knowledge, that’s never happened.
5. If nuclear decay rates have changed, then why do ice cores like the one taken at Vostok, Antarctica show agreement between annual layer counts and isochron age? A change in nuclear decay rates wouldn’t affect the annual temperature fluctuations that form the basis of the annual layer counts, so the two different methods of dating the same (~400,000 year old) ice core should be different. They aren’t.

Your example was bad. If you can't even retract your more general claim, can you at least admit that your example was actually bad, not just "maybe" bad?

I'm not the one who claimed that some facts support the creationist position. You did. Repeatedly. Again, you can either find an example that isn't ridiculously wrong, retract your absurd claim, or keep pulling a "Jane" by doing neither. Surprise us.

To nobody's surprise, Jane "pulled a Jane" again. Retracting the two words "went missing" ignores all your other baseless smears, which I helpfully listed here. It's strange that you say I think you are another person. Anyone who reads this thread can confirm that I never said any such thing.

It's amusing that you have the time to write all that arrogant nonsense but don't have time to provide even one example of a fact that supports the creationist position. Again, you can either find an example that isn't ridiculously wrong, retract your absurd claim, or pull a "Jane" by doing neither. Surprise us.

Again, water is wet, which doesn't support evolution. But your original claim before your goalpost moving was that there are some facts which support the creationist position. You can either find an example that isn't ridiculously wrong, retract your absurd claim, or pull a "Jane" by doing neither. Surprise us.

Now that you've moved the goalpost to a fact that just doesn't refute the creationists' arguments, here's one: water is wet.

No, isochron dating only relies on nuclear decay rates being constant, which has been confirmed by SN1987a, etc. Try again.

What facts support the creationist position?

... this is why others caused an uproar when "original data" went missing from EAU and CRU right around the time of "climategate". ... there was simply no way to evaluate the quality of CRU's work. access to the RAW DATA was NOT available. Only data that has already been "massaged" (to an unknown degree) was available before the "official" release, and that release was prompted by complaints about this very (and very valid) issue. ... access to original data is vital to verifying and reproducing results. ... CRU could have avoided the FOIA requests if they'd simply handled things in a professional, reasonable manner, as opposed to one that was blatantly arrogant and dismissive. They needlessly pissed a lot of people off. When you do that, you should not expect them to not piss you off in return. ... I'm not trying to say data was actually "missing", but it is true that some of it was not available. And CRU's documented attitude regarding requests about it contributed to an atmosphere of distrust. ...

Jane Q. Public, please use your feminine voice to tell Lonny Eachus that when he finds himself deep in a hole, he should use his masculine strength to... stop digging.