Break out the champagne substitute. Our humble efforts have finally come to the attention of internet climate giant And Then There’s Physics (real name unknown).

Interestingly, his or her comments section appears to be infested with skeptics in and out of disguise.

Someone called ‘Victor’ venemously mocks the host/hostess with,

Feeling lonely/ignored? Write a post about consensus.

‘John Hartz’ then agrees with our own Ben Pile’s nomenclature system, writing,

If the consensus enforcer shoe fits, wear it!

‘Magma’ endorses, almost verbatim, what I’ve been saying for years about the evidentiary bankruptcy of our recursively-spurious opponents—my emphasis:

Naturally enough the second thing the consensus enforcers did was to enforce a consensus on the consensus studies. They’re not stupid, you know. It’s turtles all the way down.

At that point it all veers a bit far right for my taste, with a ‘David Appell’ claiming that,

Alex Jones is quite sane.

ATTP must have his panties/her bra in a knot right about now. The disloyalty. The betrayal.

What happened? Did the non-existent debate hit some kind of tipping point while I was asleep?

Anyway, flock on over to ATTP’s and leave a comment.

Just kidding.

UPDATE: On a whim I decided to read the OP itself, and I’m glad I did. It’s even funnier than the vigorous debate comments section.

The pièce de résistance would have to be this astrobionomical understatement from Anders:

Climate science is a little unusual in that there is research into quantifying the level of consensus.

Um, yeah. That is a little abnormal. And the insights keep coming:

In most research areas, this isn’t necessary, because…

Dear reader, what do you think the author wrote next? (No cheating by reading the post.) Was it:

a) …consensus has nothing to do with science, which is much more interested in a little thing we call evidence. As the late great Michael Crichton observed, poetically if not literally: “If it’s science it’s not consensus, and if it’s consensus it’s not science.”

b) …a consensus is defined—in the rules of science itself—as having an evidentiary weight of 0.0, leaving the entire subject of consensus far beneath the radar (and dignity) of scientists and scientifically-literate citizens alike.

c) …a consensus is defined—in every English dictionary known to man—as a majority opinion, and opinions are like anuses in science, only not as interesting.

Before you answer, bear in mind: ATTP has claimed to be a scientist and therefore must know the first thing (if not the second or subsequent things) about how science works.

Locked in your answer? Good.

Wrong. Not even close.

What Anders actually wrote is:

…all you really need to do is ask someone.

I must confess to feeling a bit silly now. I’d always assumed that ATTP—for all his/her climate comprehension difficulties—was at least competent in their own field, something called astrobiology (don’t ask).

But apparently Anders is evidence-illiterate even on his or her own astroturf. From the sounds of it, reading the literature is too hard for him/her. Even the classic astrobionomy textbooks are above his/her pay grade, it seems.

Instead our pseudonymous friend has no choice but to wander the halls of the University of Edinburgh, accosting random colleagues and asking, “What do 97 out of a hundred bioastrologers think about [insert any one of the great open questions in bioastrology today]?”

One has to wonder what kind of wild-ass guesses they fob Anders off with. After all, we’ve established that NOBODY EVER QUANTIFIES CONSENSUS IN THE NON-PATHOLOGICAL SCIENCES. So it follows, if you know how to reason—and please don’t tell ATTP this—that whatever his or her workmates say in response to such an imbecilic question has to be calculated ex posteriori. Or as our Scottish conspecifics would say, out of their arses.

I swear that’s the last time I fall for the Gell-Mann fallacy. Until the next one.

I’ve said it before: weep. Weep for Scotland.