Epistemic closure seems to be an attempt to characterize US conservative right and Tea Party by lefty spinners:-

The Great Epistemic Closure Debate

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/the-great-epistemic-closure-debate

Bill somehow manages to apply the characterization to scientific discourse by some vague logic and association beknownst only to him.

“epistemic closure” — an intellectual world in which the only trustworthy sources of information are those within your movement.

In reality, an apt self-description of Bill. He can’t entertain the notion that Anthony may actually have isolated a valid deficiency in the land-based measurement network because the source of the critique did not originate from an approved warmist enclave dedicated to “the cause”.

They don’t have the audience we do, so there’s no cause for anxiety on that score, at least. I notice we’re up over 108,000 comments, but the count at HT is just over 33,000.

By that measure, we’ve garnered three times more public awareness than HT. Well done, everyone!

Finding errors in temperature data makes you a “creationist” .

I’m lost for words

Nova:-

This is a paper that will be quoted and requoted. It’s five years worth of work, unpaid, done late at night, entirely redone in the last year. We all owe Anthony Watts and Evan Jones, plus Steve McIntyre and John Christie, plus many others (like all the volunteers who did site-surveys) more than a huge thank you. Watts has taken on giant institutes like NOAA, GISS, Hadley, East Anglia, they with billions at their disposal – and he’s won. Sure, this won’t be the last word on it, but where are the real climate scientists who say enough is enough and they want junk thermometer records deleted from “high quality” compilations and they want adjustments for artificial warming to cool the result, not exacerbate the error?

http://joannenova.com.au/2012/07/muller-the-pretend-skeptic-makes-three-claims-hes-half-right-on-one/

Versus Taylor in response to a question to Thomas from Andy:-

andyS August 1, 2012 at 9:07 am

Why did you put quotes around Watt’s “paper” and not Muller’s?

Rob Taylor August 1, 2012 at 9:29 am

Perhaps, Andy, because Muller is a genuine scientist who has put his paper in for peer-review, whereas Watts is a failed meteorologist who just pulls stuff out of his derriere?

http://hot-topic.co.nz/jim-renwick-on-the-state-of-climate-science/#comment-33324

For the record.

The ignorant blinkered irrationality – spitefulness combination adopted by Taylor/Thomas-type mentality in response to anything that contradicts their made up mind is becoming the hallmark of an unhinged lost-the-plot group of individuals IMO.

Andrew Revkin asked me to provide comments on this article of his where the National Climatic Data Center was asked to respond to Watts et al 2012:

A Closer Look at Climate Studies Promoted Before Publication

Here is what I sent to him:

My comments on Thorne’s response are pretty simple.

They still refuse to get out of the office, to examine firsthand the condition of the network and try to come up with hands on approaches for dealing with station inhomogeneity, but instead focus of trying to spot patterns in data and massage it. In my view this is the wrong approach and the reason that we are in this polarization today. We are conducting a grand experiment, and like any scientific experiment, you have to carefully watch how the data is being measured in the experiment environment, or problems will invalidate the measurement. If Climate Science operated under the same rules as Forensic Science, the compromised data would be tossed out on its ear. Instead, we are told to accept it as fully factual in the court of public opinion.

Continues>>>>>>>>>

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/30/my-response-to-ncdcs-op-ed-in-the-new-york-times/#more-68408

Revkin:-

Given that the new paper from Watts and his team largely takes aim at the work of climate researchers at the National Climatic Data Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, I sought a reaction this morning from three of the scientists there responsible for temperature data and analysis — Peter Thorne, Matthew Menne and David Easterling. They wrote that they would not comment on the Watts paper prior to its publication but could offer some context. Here’s the note from Thorne defending the quality of temperature records in the United States (it’s a bit technical in spots):

Thorne’s note follows>>>>>>>

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/a-closer-look-at-climate-studies-promoted-before-publicatio/

There is, of course, one very, very sad aspect to this story – and truly it pains me to mention it but journalistic duty compels me to do so – and that’s the dampening effect it may have on the grandstanding of a hapless fellow by the name of Professor Richard Muller.

Poor Professor Muller has been telling anyone who’ll listen – his amen corner in greeny-lefty MSM, mainly – that as a former “skeptic” he has now been forced by weight of evidence to conclude that global warming is definitely man-made and there has been lots of it (a whole 1.5 degrees C – Wow! that’s like almost as much as you’d get if you drove from London to Manchester!!!) since 1750. Tragically – as Watts has very reluctantly and by-no-means-experiencing-any-kind-of-Schadenfreude had to point out is that the data used by Muller to draw these conclusions was unreliable to the point of utter uselessness.

So, in the spirit of magnanimity in total crushing victory I would urge readers of this blog not to crow too much about the devastating blow Watts’s findings will have on the Guardian’s battalion of environment correspondents, on the New York Times, on NOAA, on Al Gore, on the Prince of Wales, on the Royal Society, on Professor Muller, or on any of the other rent-seekers, grant-grubbers, eco-loons, crony capitalists, junk scientists, UN apparatchiks, EU technocrats, hideous porcine blobsters, demented squawking parrots, life-free loser trolls, paid CACC-amites and True Believers in the Great Global Warming Religion.

That would be plain wrong.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100173174/global-warming-yeah-right/

Gandalf – the mysteriously on-the-ball Herald commenter – is a big fan of BEST, I might bring up this topic in passing. But without too much crowing of course – that would be wrong.

Not much good to say about Muller
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/comments-on-the-game-changer-new-paper-an-area-and-distance-weighted-analysis-of-the-impacts-of-station-exposure-on-the-u-s-historical-climatology-network-temperatures-and-temperature-trends-by-w/