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Comments 59801 to 59850:

  1. ABC documentary demonstrates the how and why of climate denial
    Sceptical Wombat, you said @2: I don't think it is profitable to waste time impugning Minchin's motives - it is much more important to include as much as possible of the evidence for global warming. This clip maybe not profitable for us - who understand science - but it surely is profitable for people like Dibble's mum. Or just look at the comments in John's ABC Env article: many people don't understand (for whatever reasons) basic concepts of physics of climate science. Therefore, basic arguments that Naomi puts forward in this censored clip (about GHG being major driver of AGW) must be repeated until large audience understands that there is no legitimate debate left at scientific level. I understand that listening to this deja vu basics is waste of time for you but it's not for the audience the program is directed at. So, like others, I'm disappointed that ABC censored it, giving false impression that Naomi & Minchin are having equal stance here and thus reaffirming denial in very large part of public.
  2. Two Centuries of Climate Science: part one - Fourier to Arrhenius, 1820-1930
    Chris, good point. A better wording would be "they will still restrict heat-flow out into space."
  3. ABC documentary demonstrates the how and why of climate denial
    Naomi Oreskes did quite a good job in highlighting the weakest point of the conservative climate policy. The longer we wait the more invasive will be Government intervention, one thing not many will welcome. What they're trying to do is really short-sighted, delaying mitigation measures may be profitable in the short term but it will leave the world in an undesirable situation in the longer term. This is exactly what ConservAmerica (former Republicans for Environmental Protection) is trying to avoid, making it clear that environmental protection is not a partisan issue per se, while the solutions are or might be. It's only the distorted views of right wing fringes (fundamentalists?) that gives this impression to (presumably) gain political benefits. In the meanwhile, we're still waiting for a conservative climate policy other than attack the science, ignore the problem and keep going. To moderators: although my intention is to show that environmental protection is a non-partisan goal, I understand that I may have crossed the line of "no politics". Please delete if appropiate.
  4. Renewables can't provide baseload power
    #71 You really think its not subsidized? These are deals companies make before they will build a new plant. In Australia there are even special government departments whose only job is to come up with deals to get industries to invest. No company is stupid enough to build a new power station without a deal. They don't have to invest in NZ, they can take their money and invest where they will get a deal. Its all done under confdentiality agreement. No subsidy Is the equivalent of someone paying full price for a new car. Doesn't happen (except for the very stupid).
  5. ABC documentary demonstrates the how and why of climate denial
    I agree with Stevo that this footage should have been aired. Having said that, I can see why it was dropped. With this programme, ABC are doing exactly what she says the denial industry are setting out to do. They're shifting the debate to be about the science, in order to delay doing something about the problem. My mum wouldn't understand either side of the'argument', but she'd watch this and think there was one.
  6. Renewables can't provide baseload power
    Oh, and ETS increases cost of power to consumer, not decrease it. Where is your evidence that $0.24/kwh is not the unsubsidized price?
  7. Renewables can't provide baseload power
    So where are the subsidies in New Zealand? That is what I am pointing out. ETS only came into play few years ago if you are regarding that as "subsidy". Not that relevant as no new carbon-burning generation has been built since.
  8. Sceptical Wombat at 14:37 PM on 26 April 2012
    ABC documentary demonstrates the how and why of climate denial
    I disagree with Stevo - I don't think it is profitable to waste time impugning Minchin's motives - it is much more important to include as much as possible of the evidence for global warming. My complaint is that the the ABC is forever pitting seasoned political campaigners on the right against young relatively inexperienced idealists from the left. In Q and A it is often a representative of a conservative think tank versus a celebrity of some type. Anyhow most Australian's surely know that Minchin is famous for apologising to the John Nicholls Society for the fact that Work Choices didn't go far enough and that the coalition would do better in the future.
  9. Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
    Levitus find a forcing of 0.39 Wm-2 for OHC to 2000 m since 1955 due to GHGs, which corresponds to a global forcing of 0.27 Wm-2. AR4 concludes a net global, anthropogenic forcing since 1750 of +1.6 [+0.6 to +2.4] W m–2. So, Levitus find a decrease in forcing since 1955?
  10. ABC documentary demonstrates the how and why of climate denial
    It annoys me intensely that footage such as this failed to make it to air. What other gems have been edited out so that the media could maintain an illusion of fairness?
  11. Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
    RW1, I suggest you take your comment to the climate sensitivity thread.
  12. Renewables can't provide baseload power
    #68 Despite looking, I have not found any country where that electricity market financial model actually exists ie zero subsidies during development or during operations. Are you aware of its existence? Nor aware what is/would be the electricity tariff under in unsubsudised market? Would be rather high.
  13. Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
    Stumbled onto news release for today "Warm Ocean Currents Cause Majority of Ice Loss from Antarctica" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120425140353.htm
  14. Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
    Can you move my deleted comments to an appropriate thread of your choice? If Tom wishes, he can continue the discussion there.
  15. Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
    Which thread, DB? How about suggesting a thread before deleting comments?
  16. Renewables can't provide baseload power
    If a generating company wants to build a hydro, windfarm, etc. then they must buy the land and build it unaided, and raise capital in normal way. You can only make money from say a wind turbine if your price is competitive enough to bid into the market. Transmission costs ($0.17/kwh) are passed to directly to consumer. While a government owned company, the transmission provider has to raise capital with bonds, pays tax at company rate and dividends on profit. What is coming into play slowly is effectively a "subsidy" on non-carbon generation - the Emission Trading Scheme. However, renewables were more than competitive with coal/gas before it arrived. Also, emitters were given credit for current rate of emission, the ETS so far only counts against expanding carbon-generating emissions. The clear message here is that government is doing its level best to ensure there are no direct or indirect subsidies.
  17. Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
    Eric#67: Thanks for your kind words. Here's another take on the 'more people die in winter, but not necessarily due to extreme cold' story. Most of them are due to strokes and heart attacks. "This is because the blood becomes more liable to clot in people who are exposed to the cold." ... Studies show elderly people, and particularly those on low incomes, are at the greatest risk. There are a number of reasons why. Those that succumb are not necessarily sick already, but older people's blood vessels tend to have rougher linings than those of younger people, which makes them even more susceptible to clotting. We know that there will still be winter even under the worst global warming scenarios, so this cause of death may not vary all that much. Indeed, it may rise as the population ages. However, when the hot get hotter, heat-related deaths will rise. Unless, of course, we do as Chip suggests and simply 'adapt.' We can simply evolve so that we are born wearing one of these.
  18. Eric (skeptic) at 11:38 AM on 26 April 2012
    Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
    It's such a simple question that I asked above, that I was sure there was a simple answer. But while there are some simple answers, e.g. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/02/090209-flu-humidity.html they are incomplete.
  19. Eric (skeptic) at 11:30 AM on 26 April 2012
    Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
    Muoncounter, I am sorry to hear of your father's death. I don't know why there are 60k more deaths in the U.S. in winter than there are in summer. I would appreciate any references anyone has to help explain it. In the absence of such references I have to assume that cold weather is a factor in some of those deaths even indirectly. For example more people confined indoors with less ventilation than summer.
  20. Renewables can't provide baseload power
    There are hundreds of ways of subsidizing, or externalising costs. For the hydro, who paid for the dam, the land the dam is on, the land the power station is on, the transmission lines, the land the transmission lines are on, the roads, the water costs, the compensation for flooded farms etc. For the gas power station, do the gas producers pay full taxes on gas provided to powers stations, or do the gas producers have an obligation to provide gas to power stations at a defined and reduced cost as part of their approvals with the government? In Australia green energy is cross subsidized by power companies having a mandatory renewable energy target, so they pay the subsidy by installation rebates and feed in tariffs as high as 66 cents/kwh. So subsidies can be well hidden. The point is if you remove subsidies, you change the economics of supply, whic means you move on the supply-demand curve and get a new price equilibrium. The other way of looking at it is, what is the role model country for electricity generation and do they have subsidies and what is their cost?
  21. Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
    Here's another data point: Texas temperature-related mortality, 2003-2008: -- sourced above Texas is 'highly adapted' to heat, however, the figures in this period - which, of course does not include the record-shattering heat wave of 2011 - show that more people still die of heat-related causes on an annual basis. This argument that "heat-related deaths are less common in hotter cities" is totally bizarre and suggests a very jaundiced worldview.
  22. Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
    RW1's bizarre claims assume that solar forcing results in no feedback response. That is, if the world's oceans are heated by 1 degree C by an increased GHG concentration, that will result in increased evaporation and an increase in absolute humidity (and hence a water vapour feedback), but that an increased temperature of the same proportion brought about by a brighter sun will not increase evaporation at all, nor melt any snow, or in any other way have feedbacks. RW1 can only attribute this view to climate scientists because, as always, he operates in complete disregard of what climate scientists actually say. As KR ably demonstrated, climate scientists make no such assumption. Indeed, in the only direct comparison in the chart above, CO2 forcing is around 10% more effective than solar forcing, and WMGHGs in general are 20% more effective - a far cry from the 300% claimed by RW1. These small differences are because the CO2 GHE and solar warming have their strongest effects at different latitudes, and at different times of the day and year. Still more bizarre is RW1's claim that CO2 should result in less warming because of the energy needed to modify the internal energy structure of the atmosphere. What is bizarre here is that inside the troposphere, there is no significant difference in the change in temperature structure with time under GHG and solar warming. But solar warming heats the stratosphere, while increased GHG cools it - so as usual, RW1 gets the science completely backwards.
    Moderator Response: [DB] Please take this discussion to one of the more appropriate threads. RW1 must perforce translate everything climate related into electrical engineering terms instead of learning the science in question; a very slogging approach, detrimental to thread health.
  23. Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
    "excessive linearization" is inappropriate attempts to linearize a non-linear system. That's the only way to conclude "The AGW 3C rise hypothesis requires that watts of GHG 'forcing' have a 3 times greater ability to warm the surface than watts forcing the system from the Sun." As KR's plot show, AGW requires no such thing.
  24. Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
    Chip Knappenberger - Climate change is just that: change. And changes, even if successfully adapted to, always cost money for those adaptations. Monies that would not have to be spent otherwise - new costs...
  25. Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
    Eric#58: Are you equating deaths that occur in a particular calendar month with deaths due to a specific set of causes? Clearly there were more deaths in the US during each of the years given in the NWS chart/table - but my father's death this past February, for example, was not due to cold weather. He was 95.
  26. Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
    62, Chip, You have a rather simplistic view of things. Clearly if things get hotter (1) climate control equipment must run longer, more frequently, and at higher power, (2) there will be areas that would not have needed anything before but do now and (3) there will be more extreme events, even for prepared areas, that exceed or strain capacity (or require the expense of much greater capacity simply to prepare for such peaks). We're not talking about costs "that were going to be spent anyway." We're talking about adding (substantially) to those costs. That is fairly obvious for anyone to see. Or did I misunderstand your statement?
  27. Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
    RW1 - "It's the non-linearity of the system's response to the forcing of the Sun that contradicts GHG 'forcing' being 3 times that of solar." Nobody claims that GHG forcing efficacy is 3x that of solar. They are roughly the same according to current data, with long-lived GHG's perhaps 10-15% more effective than solar due to where the energy goes. But if the solar input increased by 3.7 W/m^2 (as per a CO2 doubling), we would still expect ~3C of warming total.
    Moderator Response: [DB] If RW1 persists in his refusal to understand this point, then he will have to take it to a more appropriate thread. This will be about the 4th go-round for him, if so.
  28. Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
    scaddenp (RE: 81), "Climate science agrees solar and CO2 forcing are about the same. It's your excessive linearization that makes you think that CO2 is required to be 3 times solar." Actually, no - it's the exact opposite. It's the non-linearity of the system's response to the forcing of the Sun that contradicts GHG 'forcing' being 3 times that of solar.
  29. Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
    Sigh, numerous people have tried to help you see this particular error, RW1, but since you wont do your homework, I doubt it is worth trying. Just for the record, the efficacy of the various forcings are approximately the same (see here and Hansen 2005. Climate science agrees solar and CO2 forcing are about the same. It's your excessive linearization that makes you think that CO2 is required to be 3 times solar.
  30. Chip Knappenberger at 08:24 AM on 26 April 2012
    Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
    dana1981 (#60); You have made the point on several occasions that adaptation to heat waves is occurring without consideration of a changing climate. So, a certain value of your “significant cost” of on-going adaptation is unrelated to climate change. I hypothesize that climate change may hasten the adaptation saving more lives sooner. Does it add costs beyond those that were going to be spent anyway? Like I said, I am not an economist. But doesn’t the possibility exist that money spent now is cheaper than money spent later? I don’t know the answers, but I think it is a possibility worth considering and not one summarily dismissed. One way to reduce the threat of wolves on sheep is to kill all the wolves, another is to train a sheep dog to keep the wolves at bay. -Chip
  31. Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
    Actually, if anything, the ability of a watt of incremental GHG 'forcing' to warm the surface would be a little less than solar because some of the internal energy would have to be expended to reorganize the temperature structure of the atmosphere.
  32. Two Centuries of Climate Science: part one - Fourier to Arrhenius, 1820-1930
    Sometimes, while thinking of the importance of infra-red in this whole business, I like to start with Herschel in 1800. His realization provided a backdrop to all subsequent thinking on climate science even though he was not thinking about climate. Noel
  33. Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
    How do I know I'm right? Very simply. The AGW 3C rise hypothesis requires that watts of GHG 'forcing' have a 3 times greater ability to warm the surface than watts forcing the system from the Sun. Give that each incremental watt from the Sun causes proportionally less and less warming in the system, and a watt of GHG 'forcing' can only do the same amount of work as a watt of solar forcing, Occam's razor prevails.
  34. Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
    Who cares if the endangerment finding looked at the question of what it would be like if no adaption or no mitigation occurred? That's a different argument and question. You are avoiding the argument being presented here. You've yet to show how mitigation is harmful. Your reasoning doesn't address ethical concerns. Your evidence doesn't back your claims.
  35. Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
    Well Chip, to return to my analogy, your argument is akin to saying we should require everyone to buy bulletproof vests instead of taking measures to reduce gun violence. Your approach doesn't address the existing threat, it simply forces people to adapt to it (at a significant cost). The problem is that you're arguing the threat doesn't exist, when you should be arguing that there are different ways to address the threat. I agree with that. I believe it was Lonnie Thompson who said that climate change will result in some combination of mitigation, adaption, and suffering. But your fundamental argument, that the EPA is wrong to call increased AGW-caused heat events a threat, is incorrect.
  36. Chip Knappenberger at 06:44 AM on 26 April 2012
    Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
    dana1981 (#55), Thanks for the hosting the discussion. I don’t think we’re really that far apart on this particular topic, but obviously, if we were in complete agreement, you wouldn’t have written your piece in the first place. :^) I agree that adaptation to extreme heat (a threat) is ongoing (even without climate change). I just think that climate change hastens the adoption of adaptive measures. And thus more quickly induces us to reach a point where we are better off than we were before. Heat can kill if you aren’t prepared. This is true today, in the past, and in the future. We could try to force the climate to a state where there are no heat waves and thus potentially solve the whole problem. Or, we could try to force the climate to a state the same as today’s (or the 1950s, or whenever) when heat waves presumably occur less frequently (and with less intensity) than they will in the future. It is not clear to me , although admittedly it seems clear to most everyone else on this thread, that this solution produces less heat-related mortality than will occur under, say, midrange scenarios of unmitigated climate change. You just can’t say that since heat waves are a threat, that more of them are a bigger threat. Most any type of weather is a threat of some sort. That’s why “shelter” is a basic need. But once you have sufficient shelter, then the threat is reduced. Right now, many places don’t have sufficient shelter from heat-waves which occur in the course of a normal climate. Global warming may hasten a solution to that problem. It seems to me, that an assessment of the impacts on public health and welfare should at least consider such a possibility and that short-term negative impacts may be replaced by positive ones in the long-term, once sufficient shelter has been established. -Chip PS. And grypo (#57), I am somewhat familiar with the EPA’s adaptation strategies when it comes to extreme heat events, in fact, I had a hand in the development of their Excessive Heat Events Guidebook. But none of that matters when it comes to how the EPA assessed endangerment from GHG emissions. This is what they have to say about adaptation: "EPA considers adaptation and mitigation to be potential responses to endangerment, and as such has determined that they are outside the scope of the endangerment analysis."
  37. Eric (skeptic) at 06:27 AM on 26 April 2012
    Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
    muoncounter you are pointing to 138 deaths from heat versus 76 from cold (2010) but the statistics from 2006 show 60k more deaths in DJF than in JJA. There can be explanations that are not strictly weather-related like the seasonal spread of flu, but I don't think that explains the whole difference.
  38. Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
    Chip #54 More nonsense. The EPA has pages and pages on local adaption strategies. It's almost as if Chip is suggesting that because he wrongly believes the EPA is making decisions without considering other strategies (adaption) then any other strategy (mitigation) is wrong. - the adaptations make you better off than you were before. - So what? What does that have to do with mitigation and the EPA? Your original article says that we should let heat waves happen and then people will adapt. You are saying that in preventing disaster, we are causing more disaster. You've yet to show any logic, science, statistics, or anything else (besides the twisted logic about people learning their lesson and letting poor people unnecessarily suffer) that actually supports your point. And even if you did, your theory is highly unethical. Read what you wrote: -- “longer, more intense and more frequent heat waves” may actually improve the public health and welfare, and that in trying to prevent them, the EPA is causing harm. -- How about adapting beforehand. Then mitigate for the next few generations. How is that possibly harmful? Not enough people dying to get them to adapt? You are being so ridiculous.
  39. Renewables can't provide baseload power
    Realist - why do you say that? Where is the evidence of any subsidy? In the '80s and '90, economic reform here screamed about level playing fields and any form of business subsidy became a dirty word. Health care and education get subsidies and there are some schemes for getting government contribution to research, but nothing for generation and delivery of electricity. I'd say there was evidence that dumping subsidies doesnt send electricity costs through the roof (and your taxes go down - or would if your government could balance its books). If you feel that you must subsidize electricity on social grounds then put subsidy on the delivery so all forms of generation are on an equal footing.
  40. Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
    Chip Knappenberger:
    Composer99 (#50): My link was supposed to be back to my upthread comment #12.
    Thanks, I believe a mod fixed the link.
  41. Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
    Chip, I think you're still having some logic problems.
    My original article that dana1981 wrote this thread in response to was regarding the EPA’s failure to consider adaptation when assessing whether greenhouse gas emissions were endangering the public health and welfare in regards to extreme weather events"
    If people need to adapt to a threat like increased heat waves, then they endanger public health and welfare. This gets back to my gang violence example. People can adapt to gang violence by staying indoors more, for example, but the fact that they can adapt to the threat doesn't mean the threat doesn't exist. Adaptation also has a cost, as we've noted repeatedly. I do agree that adaption will likely continue. However, you still have these two logical problems. 1) You haven't shown that people are adapting because of the increase in heat events. That's an assumption, and thus you have not demonstrated that the EPA is wrong to classify AGW as a heat-related threat to public health and welfare. 2) Even if people are adapting as a direct result of increased heat waves, that also doesn't undermine the EPA conclusion, because they are adapting to the threat. Your argument is that we're better off adapting to the threat than if the threat didn't exist. That may or not be true, but even if it's true, the EPA is correct to call this a threat. It just happens to be a threat that we can successfully adapt to, up to a certain point, at a certain cost.
  42. Chip Knappenberger at 05:04 AM on 26 April 2012
    Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
    KR (#53) and Moderator (#45), Of course I am not considering what would happen in the absence of adaptation…as my original Master Resource article points out, that is precisely what the EPA did, and such a consideration is completely unrealistic. People don’t want to die, so they adapt as best they can. And sometimes, as I believe to be the case with heat-related mortality, the adaptations make you better off than you were before. -Chip
  43. Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
    Chip Knappenberger - Most of your links have been inoperative; you might want to review the Comments Policy notes on link insertion. I would have to agree with MMM's post - you claim the Jacobson conclusions are pre-determined without actually providing any issues with the causal chain between CO2, pollution, temperatures, and mortality. Secondly, as MMM pointed out, effects on mortality due to adaptations are a different question than whether AGW will produce higher mortalities than would occur otherwise. You are trying to change the question, and numerous posters have (quite correctly, IMO) called you on it.
  44. Chip Knappenberger at 04:29 AM on 26 April 2012
    Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
    michael sweet (#46): My original article that dana1981 wrote this thread in response to was regarding the EPA’s failure to consider adaptation when assessing whether greenhouse gas emissions were endangering the public health and welfare in regards to extreme weather events—I used heat-related mortality trends as an example of why I think the EPA was wrong. So, my primary focus is on the U.S. I am not sure what qualifies as a “poor” country, but here is a (non-peer reviewed) study out of India that shows that very simple adaptive measures (i.e., public awareness campaigns) seem to result in lowered heat-related mortality. I imagine that they could do so in the future as well. MMM (#47): I understand that the your two statements are not contradictory. I don’t think that your #2 is a given—that is my whole point! Composer99 (#50): My link was supposed to be back to my upthread comment #12. Martin Lack (#51): I am not an economist. -Chip
  45. Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
    Chip (#45), Is it my imagination, or are you deliberately dodging the issue that, the longer we wait to take effective avoiding action such as de-carbonising our energy generation systems (since we will remain highly dependent on hydrocarbons in the manufacturing of plastics etc), the more money will have to be spent on the kind of adaptation your laissez-faire attitude is going to make unavoidable? Goodness knows, we are already in one hell of a financial mess - a global debt crisis out of which we cannot spend our way... What makes you think we will be any more capable of spending our way out of an environmental crisis if we allow it to overtake us?
  46. Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
    Knappenberger's link in #45 is broken. Whether Chip or a mod accidentally put in the wrong link, I don't know.
    Moderator Response: [DB] Fixed, thanks!
  47. Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
    Eric#38: Here's a NWS graph with some multi-year averages: A related table gives annual counts going back to 1986. There are separate columns for 'cold fatalities' and 'winter fatalities,' but even if you combine these two heat wins by nearly 2 to 1.
  48. Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
    ps. My personal objection the Jacobson study is his statement on policy implications: eg, that a small number of local deaths means that a cap-and-trade is not appropriate.
  49. Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
    Chip: Please tell me you understand that the two following statements are not contradictory: 1) Heat mortality will decrease in the future. and 2) Increased temperatures due to AGW will increase heat mortality. If you want to be pedantic, I suppose we could add the clause to (2) that, "Increased temperature due to AGW will increase heat mortality compared to a future without increased temperatures". Half of your statements seem to revolve around trying to convince us that because our response to heat events will improve in the future, therefore we don't care about increased heat, while most other people are arguing that the number of deaths we'll see in the AGW case are larger than the number we'll see if the climate stayed constant, and your arguments don't seem to bear on that. Regarding the Jacobson study: while the study may have been overhyped, your arguments seem somewhat sophomoric. First, the idea that Administrator Jackson has unpublished academic studies sitting in her back pocket is dangerously close to tin-foil hat territory. Second, your objection that the study results were predetermined - eg, that more CO2 equals more deaths - is an odd objection. Perhaps, if you could point at any of the links and show that they were wrong (more CO2 emissions -> more concentration, more concentration -> higher temps, higher temps -> more ozone, more ozone -> more deaths), you'd have something. But all you can do is complain that maybe it isn't 792 deaths, maybe it is 300 deaths, and further complain that we can't observe those deaths because of the noise - which doesn't say that they aren't there (or that they couldn't be 1200 deaths).
  50. Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
    Excellent article topic and discussion. My domain is engineering, but I find the mindset that many scientists have to be worth emulating. For me, I have made a habit of re-evaluating my stance every once in a while, realizing that it is a strength, not a weakness. It is good to see the authors here think along the same lines.

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