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Well I've given up on trying to reason with ol' rodney. But I will take a minute to explain the problem with his arguement. When someone makes unreasonable assertions, like "the environmental movement is actually a communist plot" or "global warming happens mostly at night" or "the vast majority of scientists don't even believe global warming is happening" they can expect to be asked for some supporting evidence.

For the record, I have often asked rodney to defend his silly assertion, like those above. Typically he goes into hysterics doing so, generally trying to change the focus to protect his misguided assertions. When I asked him to provide some support for his assertion that "the vast majority of scientists don't even believe global warming is happening" he came back with two petitions. Now, obviously, petitions are not valid random samples, so they do nothing to support his claim about the "majority" of anything. When I pointed that out, rather than just admiting he was wrong, he went into overdrive to pull out "additional" evidence - which of course, is beside the point - additional evidence will not somehow make the petitions valid representations of the scientific community!

Then rodney tried to say that because the petitions were overwhelmingly in favor of one side they were "probably" an indication that that side really was a majority. But thats not true either. Since we don't know anything about how the petitions were circulated, we can't say they even reflect the truth. For instance, one may have been widely reported in the news, or may have been available for a much longer period of time. We may know "some" of the details, but because we don't know all, we can say nothing about the validity of the petition relative to the real world.

Then he tried to bring in the notion of "error". But error is only valid when one is conducting a scientific survey. Error can't be calculated for a petition because a petition is not controlled. But to date, this has been his last ditch effort to justify his original misguided assertion concerning the validity of petitions as evidence.

For those who might be interested I'll post below some information about scientific polls. If nothing else, the article may help point out why we can't pretend a couple of petitions are evidence for any arguement.

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Scientific polls follow guidelines

• What exactly makes a poll "scientific" as I often see reported on television, magazines or newspapers?

Generally speaking, scientific polls are those that follow a specific set of guidelines to gauge public opinion. This is done by sampling a small percentage of a population to determine the thoughts or likely actions of a much larger group of people. The goal is to come up with the same results that would have been obtained if every single member of a population had been interviewed. This is achieved by following certain guidelines with regard to the selection process, the number of people interviewed, the availability of all participants and the questions used.

The Gallup Organization is one of the world's leaders in gathering public opinion.

What follows is a general abbreviated overview of the steps taken by Gallup and other organizations to achieve reliable poll results.

Research groups say getting an accurate sample of the population is a key to successful polling. This means that each member of a sample group should have an equal chance of being selected. Gallup and many others have determined the best place to find most adult Americans is at home (not a shopping mall, grocery store or baseball game), so most polls generally begin there. The vast majority of surveys are conducted by telephone, since 95 percent of all households have telephones, and, in most cases, the times of the calls are varied so that all individuals in the sample have an equal chance of being at home.

Research groups also try to get what they call random samples. This may be done by having a computer randomly select households and varying who is interviewed with each call, such as the oldest male, youngest female or the family member whose birthday falls the latest in the year. Many polls require that persons being interviewed be at least 18 years old.

The number of people sampled in each poll is also a factor. But researchers note that as long as the selection process is done properly, it is not necessary to have an extremely large sample size. Polling organizations say generally once a sample reaches 500 or more people, there are increasing fewer accuracy gains realized by increasing the sample size.

Opinion polls can survey the general population or a specific target category of people -- say registered voters.

It should be noted, however, that a scientific poll is not a predictor of behavior but is only a snapshot taken at a moment in time.

Wow, every post you write seems to get less and less accurate! I can't imagine what you will come up with next! It's hard to know where to start with so many inaccuracies in this one!

Well I've given up on trying to reason with ol' rodney.

Actually, with the kind of nonsensical arguments you have been using, I am surprised you haven't given up earlier. I know I would have if I had that much evidence going against me! If you had a rational argument, with some evidence to back it up, you could reason with me, but how could you expect to reason with anyone with some intelligence with the nonsense you have been posting?

But I will take a minute to explain the problem with his argument. When someone makes unreasonable assertions, like "the environmental movement is actually a communist plot"

Totally misrepresented again. Is this the 27th or the 28th time you have tried to mislead others about that particular post? Keep lying about it, and I will keep telling the public the truth, at least I will until the evidence of your lies are gone. It's interesting how you keep misrepresenting this, and bringing it up, to try and discredit me. What does that post have to do with this issue anyway? If you were smart, you would wait until kingsnake deleted that post so there wouldn't be evidence of your lies. At least I can give you a little credit for "softening" your wording this time, and calling it an assertion instead of "claiming" I said it is fact like you have previously. Here's the URL for anyone who is interested. Pay particular attention to both the title of the post and the last line where I clearly said I didn't know if it was true or not, just that I found it interesting. Also notice this happened in early November. Pulatus still brings it up, and consistently misrepresents what I said, every time he is losing an argument.

http://forums.kingsnake.com/view.php?id=238454,238454

or "global warming happens mostly at night"

Here's the evidence that "global warming happens mostly at night"--I originally heard this on TV from a professor who was the head of environmental sciences at a major college.

Surface temperatures are not rising uniformly. Night-time low temperatures are rising on average about twice as rapidly as daytime highs. The winters in areas between 50 and 70° North Latitude (the latitude of Canada and Alaska) are warming relatively fast, while summer temperatures show little trend.

the whole article is at:
http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/ClimateTrendsTemperature.html

If you remember, this was in response to when you posted Al Gore's speech, when I was quoting NASA and the National Academy of Science and you were quoting a politician? Remember how Al Gore said that Global warming caused "colder winters and hotter summers" or more extremes, while the evidence shows that is the exact opposite of what is happening! And, I might add, that also confirms the theory of "urban sprawl" or "islands" creating false ground readings of average earth temps. Let's see, little change in summer and winters are warming relatively fast--that makes weather more extreme? Yeah, right Al! Well, I guess at least you got Pulatus to believe that one!

or "the vast majority of scientists don't even believe global warming is happening" they can expect to be asked for some supporting evidence.

What is better evidence than polls of scientists to show that this is accurate? I've given you plenty of evidence, you just discount it because you don't understand statistics. That's not my problem, that's yours!

Claim: The majority of scientists believe global warming is a process underway and that it is human-induced.

Fact: A 1992 Gallup survey of climatologists found that 81 percent of respondents believed that the global temperature had not risen over the past 100 years, were uncertain whether or not or why such warming had occurred, or believed any temperature increases during that period were within the natural range of variation. Further, a 1997 survey conducted by American Viewpoint found that state climatologists believe that global warming is largely a natural phenomenon by a margin of 44% to 17%.

The whole article

http://www.nationalcenter.org/TP38.html

So now that I have given you around 5 polls that all state this, you still think that "most" is false statement? You think this poll is off by so much that 81% could not possibly represent most climatologists? A 31% error? "most" is outrageous or "silly"? Yeah, right. I'll believe that, just like I believed it when you told me all the other polls don't show most either. I find it very ironic that both this poll and one of the first ones I showed you were both conducted by Gallup. First you try to attack and discount the polls as being so flawed that they aren't accurate, and then you quote Gallup because they are so respected in the polling world. Didn't you realize they were the same ones that conducted some of the polls I mentioned?--Yikes! What kind of argument is that? Attack a polls accuracy, and then use the same polling groups rules as a reference in your post, because they are respected and well known for their accuracy, to show how a poll should be done? There's some good logic!

For the record, I have often asked rodney to defend his silly assertion, like those above.

As I have done, time and time again. Even going out of my way to quote liberal newspapers, because if I happen to find evidence in a conservative one, it is discounted as false by Pulatus.

Typically he goes into hysterics doing so

It's hard not to get passionate when you ignore as much evidence as you do, as easily as you do, or you claim my statements are "silly" and "outrageous" or "outright lies" when I have consistently proved them to be true. It would be easier for me convince a pet rock! I just hope anyone reading this will see through your nonsense.

generally trying to change the focus to protect his misguided assertions.

Since when? When talking about statistics, I use numbers and then you are complaining that I am trying to make it complicated and change the subject. Since when aren't numbers, percentages and probabilities all relevant with statistics and proving "most". It is you that consistently tries to ignore all the polls that prove my point and obsess over the two petitions validity. Why ignore evidence that proves something just because you have a question about some other evidence that also just so happens to confirm it? It is also you who is trying to confuse the accuracy of polls, with the accuracy of the term "most". And you think I am trying to change the focus? Yikes, again!

When I asked him to provide some support for his assertion that "the vast majority of scientists don't even believe global warming is happening" he came back with two petitions. Now, obviously, petitions are not valid random samples, so they do nothing to support his claim about the "majority" of anything. When I pointed that out, rather than just admiting he was wrong, he went into overdrive to pull out "additional" evidence - which of course, is beside the point - additional evidence will not somehow make the petitions valid representations of the scientific community!

More nonsense. How does any petition's results change the fact that "most" is a correct representation of the evidence? As I have stated in about 10 other posts since this all started, I gave you evidence to prove most with both polls and petitions. Why are you so caught up on the petitions? "most" was the thing you were saying I was wrong about. If you don't like the petition evidence, that's fine. That's why I gave you all the poll evidence. If you give me 20 reasons why something is true, and I didn't like one of them, does that make "that something" false, even if the other 19 reasons are valid proof? Of coarse not!

Then rodney tried to say that because the petitions were overwhelmingly in favor of one side they were "probably" an indication that that side really was a majority. But thats not true either.

First, if you understand statistics, that is true. But, what's not true is that I specifically said I was talking about the polls, not the petitions. I said that when the results are that weighted, it would be extremely unlikely that "most" would not be accurate. Please quit trying to change what I said, in the hopes that I will ignore it. Is it so hard for you to understand that in a poll where 90% say one thing, "most" is extremely accurate, while in a poll where only 51% say one thing, it is far less accurate to say "most"? I also said that because multiple polls from multiple sources all confirmed this in an overwhelming fashion, and that the petitions agreed also, that the petitions were "fairly" accurate in their representation of what "most" scientists were thinking about global warming. Is that so hard to understand? I know it is hind sight, but if it agrees with the much more accurate polls, then it agrees. It is somewhat accurate just because of it's agreementwith other more accurate data. If it was way off from what the polls said, then it would be, by definition, not an accurate measure of "most", since all the polls are quite accurate.

Since we don't know anything about how the petitions were circulated, we can't say they even reflect the truth.

Not exactly true. Since we know they agree with the polls, we can say that they reflect the truth, just because they do agree! We can easily say they reflect the truth, we just can't say exactly with what certainty they do. Maybe it is 90%, maybe 80%. If we kney they were 60% correct would they reflect the truth? Yes. If they were 20% correct, would they still reflect the truth? Yes. (Reflect is a very inaccurate word and has a wide meaning). Does a dirty mirror reflect your image? Yes, just not very well. Since there was an original petition, and the second one was formed because of an outrage that occurred in the scientific community to the first one, we have 2 petitions that were both signed by scientist. They are somewhat related to each other since one was a cause, and the other was an effect. Since the second petition was formed later, as a result of the first, and since it had about 10 times as many signatures, that would indicate "most" even if the results were highly inaccurate. After all, the 2,000 signature petition, would need another 17,000 signatures to make "most" false, or an increase of 850%--pretty hard for that to happen. Or the 19,000 would have to be reduced by 89.5 percent to make "most" false.--also very unlikely. So while we can't say with extreme accuracy that it completely reflects the truth, we can say that it most probably does. And the fact that this agrees with about 5 polls that I found, doesn't hurt any either! Basically you are saying that the petitions are so far off that they are not accurate, while I am saying they can be far off due to the enormous difference between the two, and still indicate most. But again, why forget about all the more accurate polls.

For instance, one may have been widely reported in the news, or may have been available for a much longer period of time.

We know the small one (2,000) has been around longer, since the second one was a response to it, so that gives it an advantage. We also know that the small one was brought to Kyoto, during the talks there, so it was well known around the world, while the second one has been almost absent from the press, (were you aware of it before I brought it to your attention?) also giving the small one an advantage. So since the small one has a couple of advantages we know of, the small one might be over-represented, which still represents "most". Sure there are other factors, but don't ignore all the polls that say the exact same thing!

We may know "some" of the details, but because we don't know all, we can say nothing about the validity of the petition relative to the real world.

No, but we have a lot of corroborating evidence that all indicates it is correct too. Remember, all we are trying to prove is "most" or "not most". It would take a huge error, in multiple polls, to make "most" a false statement A 20% error in the Gallup polls mentioned above still easily returns a result of "most", in fact a 30% error would still be "most".

Then he tried to bring in the notion of "error". But error is only valid when one is conducting a scientific survey. Error can't be calculated for a petition because a petition is not controlled. But to date, this has been his last ditch effort to justify his original misguided assertion concerning the validity of petitions as evidence.

Absolutely false. Again you are showing your ignorance of statistical analysis. There are different types of errors, each with it's own rules. Margin of error, for instance, is only related to sample size and population size (in small populations--population size becomes irrelevant the larger it gets). Bias errors would be totally separate. A perfect scientific survey would still have "margin of error" errors. A nonscientific survey would have bias errors as well. Those two error types are totally unrelated. But a 31% error rate in a sample size of 400 polled by Gallup? Is that anywhere near being realistic? I don't think so!

But again, why do you keep trying to forget about all the polls? Can't you understand that the polls are far more accurate, as I have repeatedly stated. It just so happens that the polls represent "most" just like the petitions do. Maybe it's just a coincidence, maybe not, but they still agree, so they are accurate in describing "most" by definition.

Can you please tell me how, if a poll is accurate, and a petition agrees with that poll, the petition is not also accurate? Remember, we are still just talking about "most".

For those who might be interested I'll post below some information about scientific polls. If nothing else, the article may help point out why we can't pretend a couple of petitions are evidence for any arguement.

Wow, I don't know where to start with this one! But I'll try!

First, about polls, why do you think that a totally random public opinion poll is somehow related to the statement "most environmental scientist don't believe in global warming"?

Just by using "environmental scientists" you can't be random, because you are selecting a specific group from the population--ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENTISTS.

As for the petitions, I agree, that is why I have repeatedly presented you with polls and the petitions. Again, can't you remember you have been arguing that when I said "most" I was wrong. The polls prove it, as much as anything can be proved, and the petitions also agree. So what if you throw out the petitions all together? I was still correct in saying "most environmental scientist do not believe in global warming". Why do you think I am wrong just because you don't "like" the petition evidence?

Why are you consistently confusing "the accuracy of my statement most" with the accuracy of a petition, or a poll?

Can you honestly name one thing I have ever said on kingsnake, that you claim is "silly" or "outrageous" that I haven't been able to back up with a published article? I can't think of a one!

But you sure can misrepresent what I have said!

Again, why are you consistently confusing "the accuracy of my statement most" with the accuracy of a petition, or a poll? Those are two separate things. It's so sad when you confuse one argument with another in the hopes that you can find someone who doesn't know the difference. Unfortunately, for you and your argument that the statement "most" is wrong, I do.

Rodney

You work for the Bush administration, don't you?

Bush is trying to squirrel his way out of a bunch of silly statements too! You guys both seem have a little trouble dealing with reality.

You still can't comprehend what read? Amazing! I have already told you what I do for a living, on numerous occasions, I raise animals and wholesale them to local pet shops. I have been doing it as my sole source of income for about 12 years.

Correcting politically correct nonsense, and trying to prevent the brainwashing of the general public, is just one of my hobbies.

Another hobby that I just started, is defending myself from all your lies.

Rodney

Funny thing rodney - I have never even stated my opinion about global warming

So whose wrong now? Politically correct? All I had to do was mention Al Gore and you thought you had me all figured out, huh? Not all people are as simple minded as what you may be used to.

For the record I suspect the evidence for AND against global warming is heavily manipulated by those with an axe to grind - both on the left and on the right. But how do we get at the truth? Clearly not by debating it with you - you are as rabidly right wing as you thought I was left - ha!

Rooting out the truth, huh? A new hobby? I hope your better at breeding birds!

In the future I'll post some references that I think are honest attempts at understanding the science of global warming. And you can just beat yourself silly trying to put your particularly heavily biased spin on them if you insist, OK?

I can guarantee, I won't be using any "petitions" to PROVE anything, get it?
I knew you would...

And why don't we use petitions? Thats right! Because they are not valid samples of the population! Very good rodney! Now see, we are learning after all aren't we?

Nope, I was showing how Al Gore was contradicting everything scientists now know about global warming. I have no idea why you would quote a politician on global warming.

Like how night time and winter temps. are actually going up, when he was saying global warming made them go down.

And why don't we use petitions? Thats right! Because they are not valid samples of the population! Very good rodney! Now see, we are learning after all aren't we?

So it is wrong to use a couple of petitions to base an argument on "most" when those petitions are overwhelming in their results? When they also agree with multiple polls? When they have to be so inaccurate, that they couldn't possibly represent "most"?

Have you ever taken any statistical analysis classes in college? Just curious, because if you did, you have forgotten an awful lot of it.

So why have you constantly been using words like "ridiculous", "silly", "outrageous" if you never even believed them yourself? Trying to change the subject again after you have been proven wrong once again? (Don't worry, someday you will get something right, and when that day comes, you won't have to change sides after you loose!)

Rodney