Someone from some place out in the innertubes named “storm” has issued a challenge to debate something (it’s not entirely clear what) with Blogmocracy contributor “snork”. “Snork” has agreed to answer questions in this thread subject to the following conditions:

1. Questions have to be well-formulated questions, i.e. “do you believe in global warming” is a poorly formulated question on several grounds. For a question to be well-formulated, it needs to be complete, unambiguous, and specific. Effort will not be wasted on poorly formulated questions.

2. Questions based on logical fallacies will be ignored (i.e. “when did you stop beating your wife”). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question Questions cannot imply any of the logical fallacies listed here http://www.logicalfallacies.info/, or any other logical fallacies including Ad Hominem (Personal Attack), Bandwagon Fallacy, Fallacy of Composition, Genetic Fallacy, Appeal to Antiquity / Tradition, Appeal to Authority, Appeal to Consequences, Appeal to Novelty, Appeal to Pity, Appeal to Popularity, Red Herring, Weak Analogy, Affirming the Consequent, Arguing from Ignorance Begging the Question / Circular Reasoning, Complex Question Fallacy, Cum Hoc Fallacy, False Dilemma / Bifurcation Fallacy, Hasty Generalization Fallacy, ‘No True Scotsman’ Fallacy, Post Hoc Fallacy, Slippery Slope Fallacy, Sweeping Generalisation Fallacy, Subjectivist Fallacy, and Tu Quoque Fallacy.

3. Questions will pertain to scientific arguments themselves. Argument-to-authority type arguments such as “a consensus of experts” will be ignored. Similarly, references to research papers are not arguments. A basic knowledge of appropriate terminology will be assumed.

4. Questions must be actual questions, not statements disguised as questions.

5. When in doubt, the online Merriam-Webster dictionary will be the final authority on the definitions of words, except for words of art.

6. “Aw, c’mon” isn’t an argument.

7. The hosts of this blog agree to post all good-faith questions complete, and in full, with no editing without proper annotation. No Gavin Schmidt-like sneaky editing to change meaning will be done.

8. Questions containing obscene, abusive, incendiary, polemical, annoying, pissy, anal-retentive, or just plain garden-variety dickheaded language will be deleted, including but not limited to “wingnut” “denier”, “stalker”, “anti-science”, “Nazi”, “fascist”, references to McCarthy and the McCarthy era, holocaust references including but not limited to death cars of coal, analogies to slavery, talk about “time bombs”, reference to objects of derangement including but not limited to Glenn Beck, Glenn Beck’s boiled rubber frog, Pam Geller, the State of Arizona, references to “well-oiled propaganda machines”, Bush, Cheney, Halliburton, Vlaams Belang,“fake Jew”, “flat earth”, “racist”, “right wing”, “teabagger” “your mama”, the word “spew” and all variants, stupid metaphors such as “the earth has a fever”, stupid improper use of the words “pollution” and “toxic” and “dirty”, lunatic rantings about the sea level rising hundreds of feet, pretentious comparisons to Einstein, Feynman, Newton, Galileo, or any other well-know scientist, any insults to the religion of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, qualitative claims without quantitative backup, such as, but not limited to, “massive”, “overwhelming”, and “unprecedented”, the use of the insipid and useless word “complex”, the use of the royal “we”, any reference to “smart” or “green” anything, calls to arrest industry executives, anything said by Al Gore or Paul Ehrlich, and any other insipid sloganeeing, including but not limited to “yes, we can”, “hope and change”, and anything else of equal or greater stupidity, crackpot conspiracy theories including oil and coal industry conspiracy theories, “peak oil”, abiotic oil, conspiracy theories about Sarah Palin, how Christianists are building concentration camps, coordinated attacks on science, the Pope, Dianetics, the Freemasons, the Bilderburgers, the hollow earth, the Maury Island Incident, God hates fags, alar, Area 51, therapeutic magnets, the grassy knoll, what really happened to Ron Brown, fuel line magnets, the 300 mpg carburetor that Exxon’s owned the patent to since 1923 and the secret act of congress that allows them to keep it, pi really = 3, the government blew up the levees in New Orleans, dilithium, who shot Mr. Burns, the world’s ending in 2012, turtles all the way down, Y2K, the 12th imam, what’s under the Denver Airport, the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, suppressed science, the Zionist conspiracy, irradiation of food, WTC #7, The Mother Plane and Ezekiel’s Wheel, a missile hit the pentagon, Yakub’s experiment and the white devils, the Khazar libel, Jimi Hendrix’s death, the whereabouts of Elvis Presley, what really happened to Hitler’s brain, what John Lennon really said backward, the perfect magnetic field of Mecca, what really happened to Chuck Johnson’s brain, HAARP, chemtrails, Phrenology, the hydrate hypothesis, Piltdown man, the conspiracy against hemp, the patriarchy, large hadron collider creating a black hole that will suck the entire earth in, the white patriarchy, black helicopters, Popeye’s Fried Chicken is really ‘Pope yes’, the extinction of the Sasquatch, the Romulan cloaking device, 4000 Jews didn’t go to work on 9/11, the DaVinci codes, Jesus is gay, British Israelism, the international conspiracy to catch all tuna, the Jews sabotaged the shuttle Columbia, Saddam had no WMDs, the faked moon landing, who shot JR Ewing, www=666, where AIDS really came from, Spiro Agnew planted explosives in the twin towers, perpetual motion, why fire won’t melt steel,   technobafflegab, including but not limited to: turbo-encabulator, retro-encabulator,  unilateral phase detractors, synchronizing cardinal grammeters, free energy, capacitive diractance, prefabulated amulite, neo-Keynsian economics, malleable logarithmic casing, spurving bearings, global warming potential, pentametric fan, lotus-o-delta windings, Carbon Dioxide Equivalent, handwavium, flux capacitors, panendermic semi-boloid slots, moderate muslim, nonreversible trem’e pipe to the differential girdlespring, barack obama’s birth certificate, manestically spaced grouting brushes, phenylhydrobenzamine, 5% reminative tetryliodohexamine, diathetical evolute of retrograde temperature phase disposition, green jobs, Cholmondeley’s annular grillage coefficient, metapolar refractive pilfrometer, transcendental hopper dadoscope, nofer trunnions, religion of peace, barescent skor motion, drawn reciprocating dingle arm, sinusoidal depleneration, unobtainium, social justice, quantum consciousness, and the un-Mata Hari.

9. Science questions must be kept separate from policy questions. As such, philosophical arguments that attempt to blur that line, such as the Precautionary Principle, and “post-normal” science are outside of the scope of any discussion here, and will not be entertained.

10. Threats of violence will result in IP blocking.

11. The party making the strong claim bears the burden of proof.

With this all understood, innertube creatures are invited to present questions regarding whatever it is that they were confused about.