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#553

Viruses can't exist.

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The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
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6
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4
Better legibility
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2
Better conduct
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2

After 2 votes and with 10 points ahead, the winner is...

Ramshutu
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1764
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Description

To prove that viruses don't exist. Answer these logic questions -
1. How did the first person to see a virus know that it was a virus without any references as to what a virus looks like?
2. How do viruses find their host if they have no legs, arms, eyes, ears, brains, sense of touch or means of locomotion?
3. How can something that is dead, suddenly come to life?
4. How can viruses survive in the atmosphere and sunlight without any walls for protection? (very fragile)
5. How does a entity (virus) that kills its host pass on its genes and what does it gain by killing the host?
6. If viruses are proteins, then why don't small insects like ants find them and eat them all?

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@David

Hey, if someone's going to hold the line on basic facts about viruses, why not me?

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@whiteflame

You have the patience of a saint.

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@Neptune

Hey, welcome back - can’t imagine you’ll be around long, but always happy to point out just how little you understand basic facts.

You’re right: plants don’t have antibodies. However, rabbits do, and scientists do this thing where they inject rabbits with virus particles so that they generate those antibodies. You can then purifybthose antibodies from their blood. We then take viral extractions (e.g. ground up leaf issue suspended in buffer), boil it in detergent, run it on a gel, and blot the contents of that gel onto a membrane. We then probe that membrane with the antibodies we got from those rabbits, often attaching a protein that makes it possible to detect the proteins with chemiluminescence. Again, it’s called a western blot, and shockingly, I’ve done it enough times to speak about this without copy-pasting or looking up anything. In fact, I’d love to see you find anything from my posts that isn’t in quotes or a link and find the source for it. Feel free to Google search as much as you want, these are my words and my experiences, as well as those of my colleagues.

I’ve already responded to your claim on fractals. I know what they are.

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@whiteflame

It appears that you have made a big mistake.
Refer to - 6. Plants don't have any antibodies. Thus, you are just a fraud who knows nothing about biology at all.
All you have been doing is cut and pasting information from the internet without really understanding the information.

What are fractals?

http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/abop/abop-ch8.pdf

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@Somebody

But regardless of your own sources, you aren't answering the basic facts I'm presenting you with, so I will just start listing them every post until you respond.

1. There are no fungi in the soil of the plants I'm using, and they have plentiful health-supporting microbes available.
2. They are watered to exactly the same extent as surrounding plants, which do not experience these symptoms. They also have the same soil source as those plants, and they're drawn from the same seed lot.
3. They exist in the exact same closed and regulated environment as other plants, receiving the same amount of light, same climate, same pesticides, everything.
4. The greenhouse is consistently treated week-to-week with the same pesticides aimed at eliminating all insect pests, including thrips, whiteflies, leafhoppers, aphids and mites.
5. Plants receiving these inoculations show these symptoms on both inoculated and distal leaves, showing that there is clearly movement of whatever is causing these symptoms through the plant.
6. Plants receiving these inoculations contain viral particles, as detected by electron microscopy, polymerase chain reaction (amplification of the two RNAs present in these tissues), western blot (direct and specific detection of the coat protein from these viruses using antibodies), and northern blot (direct and specific detection of the RNAs using full-length sequences as a probe). None of these are present in uninoculated plants, nor in buffer-inoculated plants.
7. I can inoculate new plants with purified particles from these inoculated plants and see the same symptoms on those new plants.

Note that I'm not disagreeing that variables like overwatering or lack of nutrients could have substantial effects. However, it is your point that the symptoms I've presented to you are the result of something that differentiates these plants from others. Would you care to tell me what that cause is, given the above controls?

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@Somebody

...Seriously? You think that full blades of grass dying in a field in a specific pattern are equivalent to very specific cells dying in a pattern on a single leaf? I don't know where you're getting this fractal BS, but you don't seem to understand the difference between a full plant response and a localized cellular response. Whether they have similar patterns or not has nothing to do with it - you can't simply proclaim that whole plant death and a localized cellular response are functionally equivalent. The comparison to shingles (another virus-caused disease) actually reinforces the point. Shingles is a cell-based response and not a full-body death response. If we're using your analogy, it would be like saying that a shingles rash with a very specific pattern is basically the same as a portion of the population dropping dead in the same pattern.

You also just happened to ignore what those two articles actually said. Again, the first one you posted was detailing virus-induced symptoms transmitted by mites. The second and third detailed symptoms caused by a fungal infection, meaning a disease state brought about by a microorganism. It is your claim that these three articles are all wrong: that the mites caused every symptom that appeared on those plants, and that overwatering was the sole means by which those ringspots were generated. Your articles blatantly disagree.

Shingles is virus-caused, genius.

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@whiteflame

Yes, you do have selective listening and learning. No, you didn't respond appropriately to the evidence.
All plants are based on fractals of growth. Thus, it doesn't matter if it is a leaf or a grass patch. The ring spot is a generic condition and is a fractal based organic pattern which occurs on various plants in various situations. It is similar to shingles which form on human skin when people eat inappropriate foods. Thus, if a plant receives inappropriate food (soil); a lack of water; too much water; wrong location; wrong climate; wrong soil type and or pesticide poisoning; - it will present with damaged leaves or some other sign of stress. Thus, silly humans think that they can grow any plant in any location when plants are mostly specialised to a specific area. Thus, plants have sensitivities to specific soil types; rain fall; climate conditions and local animals which may have evolved symbiotic relationships with plants. Thus, bees will spread the pollen of plants which is an example of a symbiotic relationship.

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@Somebody

Your examples of overwatering are similarly selective. First off, we're talking about a very different plant now, one with a lot of individual blades that have gone necrotic in a very specific pattern. It's not similar to ringspots forming on individual leaves, particularly as that is a specific, localized chlorotic response, whereas this is just wholesale death of many members of a given plant species in a given area. Second, the article points to fungi as the culprit, stating that overwatering is not killing the plants, but feeding the fungi (you do realize, by the way, that fungi are themselves infectious diseases, right?). The second article says multiple times that fungicides ameliorate the problem, indicating that the fungi is causing the harm. The third article challenges the usage of fungicides on the basis of what effects they have on good soil microbes, but they similarly state that it is caused by fungi, and their usage of beneficial microbes to outcompete the harmful ones similarly shows that it is the microbes that are essential to the health of this grass. So, once again, a ringspot symptom (very different from anything I've presented) is caused by an infectious organism (a fungus) that can be treated in a variety of ways. You're not helping your point.

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@Somebody

You have the most conveniently selective memory and reading skills I've ever seen.

Let's start with your selective memory. You conveniently forgot that my greenhouse is sprayed weekly to kill insects, which, yes, include mites. You similarly forgot that my plants are watered by drip irrigation, a very different watering system from the usual lawn, bluegrass or otherwise. Finally, you forgot that my soils are autoclaved to remove fungi, returning beneficial microbes to the soil thereafter. So, even if you're somehow correct that these symptoms are ringspots coming from something else, they don't apply to the samples I've been using.

The first paper shows specific examples of different symptoms caused by, wait for it, Brevipalpus transmitted viruses or BTVs. It shows examples of those viruses in the mites directly, showcasing symptoms brought on by a wide range of viruses and clarifying which symptoms appear with which kind of infection. Note that there are an array of symptoms, and that if we use Occam's Razor (you love it so much, after all), you would have no means whatsoever to explain these differences. You would just have to assume that mites cause extremely varied symptoms. Yes, mites do cause damage to the leaves. No, mites have never caused ringspots to form in any pattern across leaves.

http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/orn/mites/Brevipalpus_californicus.htm

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@whiteflame

How to fix ring spot without chemicals.

https://www.organolawn.com/services/lawn-fungus/necrotic-ring-spot

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@whiteflame

Over watering causing ringspot.

https://extension.colostate.edu/topic-areas/yard-garden/necrotic-ring-spot-of-kentucky-bluegrass-2-900/

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@whiteflame

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0103-90162010000300014

Extract -
As our knowledge about possible BTV advanced in the last decade, a large number of cases were detected, mostly in ornamentals, causing localized lesions. One reason why these viruses have been neglected is the lack of systemic infection. If the mite population declines, due to seasonal factors, and the infected organs fall off or die, the sources of inoculum are reduced, and the disease literally disappears.

Thus, it's not the virus, its the mite which causes the infection.

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@Somebody

First, you keep asserting that ringspots can form by other means, and yet you have not provided any support for that claim. Scratching a leaf does not induce specific symptoms like this. It causes wilting and some general chlorosis, but we're not talking about those symptoms. We're talking about ringspots. Where is your evidence that rub inoculation causes ringspots to form? I can answer that: there is none. Previously, I've performed these same experiments with controls, inoculating plants with buffer lacking any infectious material. They do not show ringspots.

Second, remember that list of questions I posed below? You know, the ones you completely ignored that explain why things like this (rub inoculation) cannot explain the symptoms seen? We're not just talking about inoculated leaves here, we're talking about movement through the plant. Even if I somehow generated ringspots on the leaves simply by rubbing them, that doesn't explain the appearance of symptoms on distal leaves. If we're still using Occam's Razor, you would now have to add in an additional assumption: that rub inoculation of one leaf somehow shows injury on leaves that are uninoculated. A virus spreading through the plant doesn't have any similar assumptions associated with it. Similarly, you would have to include assumptions that two distinct viral RNAs just happen to be present only in plants with these symptoms, that virions can be isolated from these plants, and that those virions can be used to generate the same symptoms on other plants via multiple different inoculation methods. If you're correct that injury to the plant has the fewest assumptions, how does it explain any of this? You seem to think that the virus is, itself, an assumption, yet it is the only means by which we can explain the fact that all these things are consistently occurring. It is far more assumptive to claim that a non-specific factor is the cause of these symptoms.

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@whiteflame

If you rub a plant you will damage it. Thus, Occam's razor still applies. The simple action of rubbing a delicate plant is obviously sufficient for the plant to be injured. The injured plant will then try to repair itself by creating scar tissue which happens to be in a ring shape. Problem solved. Thanks Occam, for demonstrating to this person that a simple solution is always close at hand. Thus, there is still no need to do complicated and expensive experiments using unnatural apparatus. Nature is simple. Humans are complex and devious.

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@Somebody

I didn't inoculate the uninfected plants. I inoculated the infected ones, which involved just rubbing the surface of a single leaf with a pestle contaminated with the virus.

Again, you keep making these statements about ringspots, yet you do not provide any evidence to support your claims. Show me an example of a ringspot generated by over-watering.

Occam's Razor doesn't really apply in this case, but let's assume for the moment that it does. What assumptions do we have to make to believe that that caused these symptoms? Well, overwatering causes a number of different symptoms, so we would have to believe that it only caused these symptoms and no others, which doesn't fall in line with expectations. We would have to believe that it consistently only caused these symptoms in plants that also were rub inoculated with the virus, another point that doesn't fall in line with these results. Finally, we would have to believe that plants watered consistently by drip irrigation were overwatered, despite a full greenhouse of other plants that were watered in exactly the same way, none of the others of which showed signs of infection. So, not only would you have to make the assumption that ringspots can form in overwatered plants, but you would have no explanation for the differences between plants.

Now, let's apply Occam's Razor to the infection. I inoculated half of these plants, they all were treated the same way beyond that inoculation. After a period of 10 days, inoculated plants showed ringspot symptoms. Others did not. I was able to extract and purify virion particles from all infected plants, none from uninfected plants. I was able to detect viral RNA from both RNAs included in these viral particles. I was able to take viral particles isolated from these plants, rub inoculate them on new plants, and produce the same symptoms. Tell me: where's the assumption in here?

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@whiteflame

What do you mean by inoculate? How did you inoculate the uninfected plants?
Note - Ringspot can be induced simply by over watering of plants. Thus, why even bother looking for a complex solution when a simple solution is already available? Occam's razor applies. The simple solution is always the right solution.

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@Somebody

Yay for jumping to conclusions! You can add good bacteria back to sterile soil, as is done partly through the fertilizer added to our water source (a supply that is filtered multiple times and treated with antifungals) and partially by directly mixing soil with a bacterial mixture intended for the purpose.

But all of this is besides the point. You could present 50 different reasons why my plants may not have been healthy, but you’ve provided none that explain the symptom we’re seeing. If autoclaved soil could cause this symptom (note: it cannot), why did it only appear in inoculated plants? Why did the symptom spread through those plants from inoculated leaves? Why can I extract and purify virus particles from these plants and not from uninoculated plants? Why can I take the leaf material from these plants, grind it up, dilute it, and use it to inoculate another plant, generating the same viral particles containing the same RNA sequences? Why will those inoculations consistently generate the same symptoms, regardless of changes to watering, soil microbes, insects present, season of year, time of day, temperature, weather, length and duration of day and night cycles, presence of fertilizer, degree of human handling, other plants present in the same soil, or any of the other variables I can insert into this experiment? Why do we never see symptoms of this sort in plants not infected with a ringspot virus?

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@whiteflame

So, the soil in the green house has been purified (autoclaved). Hmmmm????
Thus, all the bacteria have been killed and the soil is completely dead. No wonder you have a problem. It's the same as giving a sick person an antibiotic which kills all their interior gut flora. This is medical and pharmaceutical industry profit making insanity. rofl

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut_flora

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@Somebody

I noticed that I forgot the overwatering theory. These plants are watered by drip irrigation, meaning that all my plants received the same amount of water over time. The plants I had not inoculated remained asymptomatic, while the inoculated plants showed ringspot symptoms. So that's a third theory down. Want to try again?

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@Somebody

You've been doing nothing but making claims about the ringspot being the result of some other means. You said you have plants that had these symptoms and magically were cured by fertilizer? Show me. Where are your pictures?

As for your theories about where they came from, I'm afraid both are bunk. The greenhouse in which I do my work uses autoclaved soil, meaning that anything alive in it (fungi included) are killed. The same greenhouse is also sprayed weekly for thrips, aphids and whiteflies, meaning that those insects are not an issue.

As for the image... I'm honestly shocked you haven't noticed my profile picture, though I will point out that Virtuoso came to comment on this debate without any contact from me. He reached out to me, not the other way around.

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@whiteflame

Note - The ring spot is caused by over watering of plants and could be either a fungus or a mark caused by an adult thrip feeding on the plant. It's not a virus!!!!!!!!!!!

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@whiteflame

Whiteflame continues to waffle on endlessly; trying to avoid having to provide any evidence. I asked him to provide the viral stain photos which he said that he had. Still waiting. And now,........... he is running to the admin, in the hope that he can weasel his way out of it through political manipulation and manoeuvring. What next???

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@David

Honestly, sounds like a better idea than it would be in practice. It's one thing if Somebody actually wanted to engage on fundamental assumptions that microbiologists and virologists engage in, which I have no doubt we do (I don't think there's a profession that doesn't do this) and I don't doubt that they do cause problems with our research. My impression is that Somebody is really only interested in dismissing evidence using personal opinion, which means he's not particularly interested in an evidence-based approach. He thinks we're all fraudsters, giving him sufficient reason to dismiss all evidence as fake and turning a debate like this into an exercise in futility. He doesn't want to prove us wrong because, by his own admission, he can't: every study on viruses is fraudulent because none of them support his view. All he can do is introduce doubt, and even that is not the result of any careful analysis of the facts, but rather a series of broad claims.

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@whiteflame

I'd honestly love to see you debate Somebody on this.

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@Somebody

Like I said, not interested in providing you something simply because you're craving an opportunity to dismiss yet another piece of evidence based on limited personal experience. I've shown other people those virions, don't feel the need to respond to your bait just to have you dismiss them offhand with absolutely no evidence or reasoning.

As for these symptoms, actually, I'd love to see those images. There are many examples of mosaic symptoms and chlorosis in plants that haven't been watered or received sufficient nutrients, but ringspots are pretty unique. So, please, present your photos.

I think you are experiencing a logical fallacy that I call venn diagram fallacy.

If sometimes symptoms of nutritional deficiency overlap with symptoms of viral diseases, this doesn't disprove the existence of viruses.

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@whiteflame

I thought you were going to show a photo of a virus. Not a photo of two leaves which are wilted. lol
Thus, you still remain a fraud. I have plants in my garden which have similar markings. I added some fertiliser and the markings soon disappeared. Thus, they were vitamin deficient and it wasn't caused by a virus. I can show you before and after photos of the leaves.

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@RationalMadman

Not really. You'll notice that the ringspots are more individual on the inoculated leaves and radiate out from the vascular tissue of the leaf on the distal leaves, so we can see differences like that. We can also inoculate into different plants and see different symptoms, but that's about it.

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@whiteflame

can you manipulate the designs they make in any way?

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@whiteflame

that ringspot virus is kind of sexy.

These images are from my own samples:

https://imgur.com/a/D9DUwZO
https://imgur.com/a/NaHj89j

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@RationalMadman

No need to apologize. Lots of misconceptions when it comes to what viruses and bacteria, respectively, cause in terms of disease. It's all good.

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@David

You are conditioned to think that. You are also conditioned to make them feel more shit for admitting they believe in it than the fact they believe in it. This is all by design; social engineering over the years.

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@whiteflame

Okay, sorry

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@RationalMadman

Are you serious about supporting flat earth? I sometimes think that all flat earthers are basically one giant Poe. At least I hope so.

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@RationalMadman

Black Plague is actually caused by a bacterium, Yersinia pestis. It causes buboes to form on the skin, which may bear some similarity to these, though in reality these are more chlorotic lesions caused by a necrotic response in the leaf tissue. You can actually see some of that necrosis in that second image.

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@whiteflame

Is the virus in the second photo like the black plague virus? The pattern seems similar on the skin.

Continental Drift (CD) may be a lie as I support flat earth theory and think that is potentially a lie about how things came to be how they are physically (there's only records post-drift it seems) but even on the flat earth some CD is possible, basically Antarctica is the outer ring and the Arctic is inside and the way the oceans and land interact position-wise can be phenomenally mystical indeed, so CD is neither here nor there in my eyes. I believe in it because it makes sense that the African-type humans moved around and ended up fucking and reproducing with the Inuit-type humans to create the variation in races and such. That doesn't fully explain 'white people' but that's because I believe there was a race/ethnicity that is in between Jew and Caucasian that... Well, it's a long story and I don't fully understand it myself.

Time changing with acceleration is to do with what you define as 'time'. If time is the 'true timeline' then you are correct. If time is the time we perceive and observe and experience, then you are incorrect as that time can truly make a second become a year if the disparity in acceleration is that severe. I don't believe in outer space being what we're told but there is still acceleration and Einstein wasn't in on any lie, he's a genius of great proportions that blatantly was unfairly able to succeed due to a rich and influential father in the science industry but nonetheless he used that to rebel against the system in a non-revolt type way. There is no way Einstein would make a truly hoax theory for the sake of the Illuminati, I DO NOT consider this viable. Newton, sure, Einstein no.

CO2 and climate change is sort of true. It's utter bullshit why they keep talking about carbon footprint as in CO2 instead of chlorofluorocarbons and hydrofluorocarbons. Carbon is an issue but CO2 is not the main reason.

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@whiteflame

Not a problem! Would love to see those photos. Hope you can get them uploaded

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@David

Glad you like them! I've got some pictures of my own, but I'm having a hard time uploading them at the moment.

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@Ramshutu

I was thinking the same thing myself, though apparently Somebody's added more things he's all too happy to dismiss without evidence, so I give the school district at least some credit for doing more to justify their views and defend them.

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@whiteflame

Those photos are really cool!

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@Somebody

Excuse me? What dignity is there in posting a photo that you will instantly dismiss? I'll open this up to everyone else: if you want to see my virions, I'd be more than happy to show you. I love the pictures I have, and I like to show them off wherever I can. I'm not going to use them to give Somebody more of an ax to grind because all he cares to do is dismiss based on his own personal beliefs. If he wants to believe I'm "a coward and a fraud", he's welcome to do so. For the rest of you, the virus produces some really cool symptoms. It's worth checking out:

https://bugwoodcloud.org/images/768x512/1402031.jpg
https://bugwoodcloud.org/images/768x512/5332064.jpg

Some so called "discoveries" need to be undiscovered and buried forever.

1. Germ theory of disease.

2. Continental drift.

3. Time can change with acceleration.

4. CO2 causes climate change.

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@whiteflame

I’m thinking of Kitzmiller vs Dover.

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@whiteflame

You still have time to redeem your dignity and reputation by providing the data. If you don't, it will be forever known on this website that you are both a coward and a fraud.

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@Somebody

Yes, because this kind of post makes it just so inviting to show you work that took me months to grow, extract, purify, fix and image. It’s great to know that you’ve made it your mission to complain about assumes fraud to the point that you wish to bring this to court. I’d love to see you try - it will be thrown out immediately.

Let's have a sue-each-other party and see who falls the hardest.

@Somebody
https://www.debateart.com/rules
"6. Threats
Misconduct should be reported to moderation rather than complained about in the forums. Even if an accusation or complaint is justified, it is not permissible to threaten another user on the basis of those accusations or complaints. Allow moderation to handle the situation. Threats are, for the purposes of this policy, personal attacks. They are not tolerated. Threats include (but are not limited to):

1. Threats of legal action."