And don't give me the old, "That's obviously stupid" response. I demand a good faith refutation that treats my central thesis seriously, even though my predictions have a poor track record and my thesis is outside of mainstream consensus.
Graphs are completely meaningless. Correlation does not imply causation. Asking for a graph is the last thing you should do. Ask for a hypothesis about why there might be a causal relationship. Test that hypothesis.
Also, graphs are demonstrably NOT completely meaningless. They can absolutely be misleading, but they can also accurately depict the underlying data. I think the point of this thread is that the authors of this study have proposed a hypothesis and collected data that supposedly reinforces it. The data (and methodology) can be analysed and verified. There's no need to start from scratch, in this case, to determine if the findings can be substantiated.
I get that it's a joke - but it's not even a very good one if you have to fake it to make it work.
Is this guy a genius who'll prove everyone wrong? Personally I seriously doubt it. But that doesn't mean the scientific community should pooh-pooh his paper.
Treating this paper as if an adult wrote it can only do good things for the climate debate. Even if it doesn't really deserve that kind of treatment.
My point is that attacking someone's argument by noting their poor academic track record is not ad hominem, it's a perfectly valid approach. Otherwise non-science people seeking to alter scientific consensus would have a trivial loophole to DoS the process.
>According to a new report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent – 18 percent – than transport.
http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/index.html
(Though it's worth noting that that report is a few years old at this point.)