examinator "NB The IPCC reports are the equivalent of researching, reading and writing and producing a totally new windows O/S....

The problem with the IPCC reports are the fallibilities yada yada"

It is not acceptable that they make mistakes and are sloppy and can be seen and perceived to have vested interests.

Why should we gamble the world's future on such, as you say, fallible science?

When their reports are then expected to be taken up by government and used to change economies, introduce tax systems, compensate other countries to the tune of Billions if not trillions of dollars, disallow coastal building, and on it goes - it is not a clear area of science since there are so many papers with alarming contradictions and many scientists who do not agree with the mainstream groupthink.

Get real mate, why should we allow a bunch of hysterical self interest types who, have all the other academic trim at stake, to change the world according to their view. (e.g. AndyG mass extinction)

"Like the man said the science is sound it is how it gets to the report in a form that non scientists can digest it that is the problem."

If these scientists are not smart enough to work out how to convey a clear message without getting fouled in peer review scandals, leaked emails showing bias and perversion of data and petty squabbles - then it is the sciences problem, not the publics.

There is skepticism, because it is not clear, it is not simple physics or anything else, it is a very complex science and idiots try to make out it is simple and if you don't understand it, then move aside the scientists know what's right for you.

The scientists also do not correct all the BS that flows, like from Al Gore or Flannery, so why should we trust they are telling us the truth when they do nothing to dispel mistruths?

Climate science is brought down not by skeptics, but by climate scientists themselves with massive hysterics, lack of honesty and contradictions.

A good question, what evidence would it take to convince one that human activity is causing catastrophic global warming? The fact is, evidence of catastrophic AGW is a necessary but not sufficient precondition of policy action.

Even if the climatology were conceded, the ecology does not follow. Carbon dioxide is plant food. The warm periods have historically been better, not worse, for life on earth. Governments have spent billions trying, and failing to find a greenhouse effect, but even it existed, the proper conclusion is that the abundance and diversity of life would be greater not lesser - you know, like a greenhouse?

Even if the ecology followed, the ethics, epistemology, economics and politics still would not and do not follow. How are we to know which person should be disadvantaged, by how much, to benefit which other person, by how much, how far in the future, where, when and why? Who is this “we” the collectivists keep referring to? Do they presume to speak for everyone in the world, including those who disagree with them, and whose liberty, property and lives the warmists would violate?

The economic and ethical illiteracy of the warmists is such that they cannot understand the implications of, or even the connection between, governments forcibly reducing food production on a massive scale in the most productive countries – the West – and people dying of starvation from food shortages in the food-importing countries.

The great political fallacy underlying the whole warmist belief system is the implication that, by establishing the fact of catastrophic global warming, the warmists have established that *therefore* government can and should take action to prevent it or fix the problem.

That is a simple non sequitur. Science doesn't supply value judgments, while policy action requires them. Therefore even if the climatology were conceded, which it’s not, *nothing whatsoever* would follow as a matter of policy.

That’s just in theory. In practice the politics will degenerate into the most protean and inane corruption the world has ever seen. For example, recently the British government paid the head of the IPCC one billion pounds of taxpayers’ money to close down his steel plant – Britian’s last - so he can take it back to India and set it up there free of all this "the-sky-is-a-falling" foolery.

Since carbon dioxide is implicated in all human activity, a power to control carbon dioxide must be an power to control all human activity – an unlimited power. The great economic fallacy is the idea that, *if only* we could vest in government total control over any and every aspect of production, how much more ethical and well-ordered would be the outcome!

The sheer idiocy of the belief system is so great, so full of grandiose culpable ignorance, that it is a veritable Herculean labour to begin refuting its myriad fallacies.

Peter

<< A good question, what evidence would it take to convince one that human activity is causing catastrophic global warming? >>

Who was asking that question - the author, another commenter, did I miss it?

In my post above, I asked KenH "What evidence would it take for you to accept the alternative?"

Believe it or not, the vast majority of scientists are NOT saying that "human activity is causing catastrophic global warming".

It seems your statement (claim) is another deliberate distortion to misrepresent what the vast majority of scientists are saying. Innocent onlookers would be confused and I wouldn't blame them.

If you are not doing this deliberately, please ... explain. I would be happy to apologise. Otherwise, please retract.

Here's Watson: "Also, a statement from 11 science academies in developed and developing countries concluded that climate change is real, and that we need to prepare for the consequences, and urged all nations to take prompt action to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions". The quality of everything emanating from these 11 academies can best be judged by noting that one of them is none other than the Academy of Science of Zimbabwe, patron and chief scientist Robert Mugabe.

In today's Australian is an article by Paul Monk ("More Heat Than Light"; promoted as Climate Change, What Would Albert Einstein Do?).This seems to be very relevant to this post & the role of the IPPC & I recommend it to all, whatever their position on this issue might be.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/more-heat-than-light/story-e6frg8nf-1225835659512

Monk puts forward, as an example of the Popperian ideal, the so called Solway conferences, in Brussels, between 1927 & 1930. In these series of meetings Albert Einstein, Henrdrik Lorentz & Max Planck, the three "grand masters" of early 20th century physics,confronted the proponents of the new theory of quantum mechanics,Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg & Paul Dirac.

As Monk relates, "Einstein was especially resistant to the new hypothesis". "Again & again, over days, he came up with thought experiments designed to show Bohr & his proteges that they must be in error. Again & again, after hours of debate, they would demonstrate that his efforts to refute their hypothesis did not work.

As Heisenberg later wrote, this was a great test for them and left them much better off, because such a man had tried again & again to show them that they were wrong and had been unable to do so".

And as to the AGW & the IPPC.
"Perhaps the greatest difficulty, however, because the Solvay conference in this case has been mediated by the UN's Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change and the impression has been growing slowly for years that the IPPC has not run like Solvay at all. The IPPC, it seems, has not been a clearing house for attempts to refute the AGW hypopthesis, but rather a political body committed to finding evidence that AGW is a reality."