Totally bumpalicious.
About cogitator
cogitator posted a flimsy, unsupported attack on my papers posted on www.rocketscientistsjournal.com. That was his comment 171. I responded in post 178 putting about eight questions or challenges to him. He posted a lengthy response in the form of a rational dialog. It is categorical, organized as quotation/response, a style which cog uses with some regularity.
However the categorical appearance is misleading because cogitator doesn’t actually answer any of the matters put to him. He gives a hint of his upcoming nonresponsiveness in his opening paragraph of post 207 where he whines that he isn’t able to answer 100 questions in every post. So he answers approximately none.
cogitator’s pretends to be authoritative, but his style is attacking by flailing. His work includes snippettes of real science, plus citations which he does not quote, or quotes which he does not cite, each of which frequently proves tangential to the subjects. As a result, a response requires an investment in research to maintain a semblance of a dialog.
In post 171 addressed to palmer, cog says one of my main points was “utterly wrong”, and suggests it was obviously so. He refuses to defend that attack, or even state what he thought wrong. So one must search for what “main point” he means.
Here may be a clue. In post 177, palmer later says incorrectly, “Glassman’s main point is correct, that for the most part, CO2 lags temperature.” To the contrary, my main point is that the CO2 in the Vostok record is entirely represented by the solubility of CO2 in water, indicating that pre-man, CO2 was supplied by the oceans. Whether this is the best model is secondary to the problem it poses to climate modeling. For natural CO2, the model is obliged to produce a concentration record curved in relation to temperature as shown by the solubility curve. Otherwise, the model will not fit the data and it will be invalided. Thus in climatologists’ terms, natural CO2 is a feedback and not a forcing as they currently implement it. That is the main point.
Contrary to palmer’s reading, and as stated in my paper, the fact that CO2 lags temperature in the paleo record is confirming of the main point. To say it was decisive would be to place correlation above cause and effect. While this is the crux of the AGW conjecture, it is not good science.
More than once in post 207, cogitator says the issue is the cause of the increase in CO2 concentration. This is not so and is disruptive.
In my paper, the fact that the PALEO record is all natural is implicit. cog changed the subject by trying to establish that the increase seen in the MODERN record was manmade. He even failed in his diversion.
cog’s method was to rely on little extracts from papers on the isotopic ratio of carbon in atmospheric CO2. He implies by the placement of his citations that the isotopic ratio measurements are taken from the INCREASE in atmospheric CO2. No investigator makes a claim that the isotopic measurements are made from the increase in CO2, and indeed it would be quite impossible. When challenged on these points, cogitator says effortlessly, “what contradiction”, for all the world sounding like Dumb and Dumber. cog doesn’t want to be engaged on points.
In 171, cogitator complains of the “tone and attitude” of my work, saying it is “pure pseudoscience at its best”. He refused to defend that insult. In post 177, palmer follows suit with the stinging remark about my work, “Sure, his physics is weak”. palmer owes everyone an explanation. His remark appears to be a parroting of Gavin Schmidt’s unsupported accusation, which is fully rebutted on my blog.
Also in 171, cog asserted that Schmidt’s reference was to the physics of solar insolation! That, too, is false and unsupported, as I stated in 178 and which cog subsequently ignored. Neither Schmidt’s accusation nor my papers said anything about solar insolation.
Just as cog’s snippettes are vaguely relevant, so are his citations.
Conclusion
cogitator is able to construct reasonably coherent sentences and paragraphs on the subject of climatology, and they invite debate. He shows enough familiarity with the subject to give the appearance of a scientific literacy. However he lacks a scientist’s ability to argue.
He refuses to engage in the point/counterpoint of a dialog. He shows no ordinary, much less scientific, debating skills. His posts burden the readers with verbosity and tangential diversions. He is spring-loaded to recite AGW dogma. He cannot be pinged. Instead of helping the argument converge on issues or points of disagreement, his style is to cause the discussion to diverge in each response. In spite of a multiplicity of long posts, we have converged on nothing on the subject of climate. On climate and in this forum, cog is a virus.