In response to a post by RL in Space/Science on 2017-05-05

You will note the implication is planted that the
news media lies, that it can’t be trusted, that it obscures salient facts. This is part of the whole Conservative mythos, that you can’t trust anyone but them to get the TRUTH. Call it fake news, or alt facts, it is still the same.

“Records”, of temperature, or of anything else, are random. Any single number is just an outlier, it means nothing–its the trends that count. So if the day before or after had a record high (or low) decades ago, what does that prove? Absolutely nothing. If the record is broken today, it means nothing either.

The statistically significant fact is when the record gets broken frequently. For example: using the satellite data set for summer arctic sea ice minima, the all-time record was broken in September, 2012. By itself, this is simply a statistical outlier, it means nothing. But when you note that record was broken, on the average, about once every five years since satellite records were first compiled in 1979: in 2012, 2007, 2005, 2001, 1990 and 1985. That means a great deal. During that same period, the high ice record was not broken, not even once. I’ve shown you the graph, you’ve seen it. (But of course, its NASA data and they can’t be trusted.)

I’m well aware that even by itself, this is not conclusive evidence of AGW. Conceivably, it might be a short term trend that will soon level off or even reverse itself as the global heat engine kicks in some unknown negative feedback mechanism. But it tells us SOMETHING might be going on that merits further investigation. It is not unscrupulous climatologists, or commie propagandists, or evil journalists, or greedy government bureaucrats, or hippy-dippy weathermen. Maybe its nature’s way of telling us something’s wrong.

If you’re reading this, Robert, I’m sorry if I’ve violated your request to keep politics off the Science board. I agree with you in principle, but TB is really starting to piss me off, he must be faced and exposed or he will just become bolder as he attempts to give his political philosophy cover and respectability.

As RL points out, TB consistently attempts to reframe the argument to divert attention from the subject under discussion in order to discredit the source, or the integrity and credibility of the poster he is responding to. I know you understand this, I first heard the term “reframe” used in this context from you, and you were talking about TB.