Flora Faun In The Taipei Times April 2013

"Since the publication of my previous letter, (Letters, March 30, page 8), I have predictably been called a fraud, and worse, on several Web sites dedicated to conspiracy-theory climate denial."

Flora Faun writes in the Taipei Times again to whine and complain about me calling her "Flaw La Fraud", never mentioning - of course - all of the nasty names she calls me in the now over 100 troll comments she has left on my blog. The fact that the Taipei Times editorial staff allow her letters to be published in which phrases like "climate denial" are not edited-out is quite illuminating; the phrase itself doesn't even make sense, and is merely a written noise made up of two words only loosely connected to the subject of skepticism over the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis.

For the sake of clarity...

1) The first objection concerns the climatic significance attributed to the greenhouse gas effect, given the empirical temperature record and the consistent failure of models to accurately predict global temperatures (they are almost always too warm). The implication is that other temperature-regulating mechanisms must have at least as large an effect as greenhouse gases, but certainly a larger effect than hitherto hypothesized. Although in her letter, FF is at pains to sketch out some of these other mechanisms (e.g. ocean heat absorption), this is entirely post-hoc and quite ironic since when those same mechanisms were mentioned by sketics in previous years, their effects were downplayed by some climate scientists and even dismissed outright by people like Flora as "denialism".

2) A second objection concerns the government policies and policy objectives advocated by people like FF, and these objections stand irrespective of the validity of the first objection. Attempts by governments to reduce carbon dioxide emissions are a bad idea for many reasons including the fact that they would amount to nothing more than futile gestures with a high cost.

3) The final objection is to the astounding emotional rhetoric used by people like FF - taking her cue from people like James Hansen and Richard Parncutt (e.g. calling coal-fired power stations "factories of death" and calling for "climate change deniers" to be executed and so on). Recently, FF herself has been harassing another blogger, telling him to disallow my comments on his blog merely on her say-so. The fact that I call such people as her "eco-fascists" is taken as evidence that I am the one guilty of hyperbole rhetoric. I do not think this is so - I think I am using an accurate description - because fascism entails the subordination of all aspects of society to a set of goals ordained by State leaders, which in this case is an extreme form of environmentalism.

"While it is a waste of time to try to reason with denialists..."

For the record, since her very first comment her some years ago now, FF has used exactly the kind of vicious, snarling ad-hominem approach she accuses me of and she never once tried to reason with me (although I certainly tried to reason with her). I am willing to make all of her comments available should anyone request them; I would hope somebody from the Taipei Times would although I do not hold out much hope of that. Here is something she recently said to another blogger in his comments section (revealed to me by personal communication):

"The Taipei Times finally saw the light and banned Michael Fuck’em after several scientists and professors signed a letter asking for him to be banned. So if you keep his posts you forever have discredited yourself and I will certainly treat you accordingly."

I wonder whether that is true, and if so, who those scientists and professors are? I have certainly criticized a number of professors who have been published in the Taipei Times over the years, and will have no hesitation about doing so again in the future.