Its not skepticism it is denialism.
The evidence and science is as unequivocal as it can be.
To deny it is to blind ones self in a stupid and selfish display of dogmatic hubris and ignorant inhumanity.

Thanks Malcolm, a thought provoking article. I also like the analogy with the dark ages as there are many similarities with history, as there always are. The Church of Rome responded to the Lutheran threat by sending in the Jesuits to protect the faith and the Cardinals.

Our modern Jesuits are the intellectual elite. Having convinced themselves there is no God, the intellectual elite actually need AGW as the basis for them to take over the role of the creator – i.e. nature (or God) no longer controls the planet – man does. And they can’t leave that to individuals can they? – They must take control. So anyone who says “actually, mate, it’s down to nature and bad things happen” takes away their raison d’être and must be suppressed.

The panels, reviews, hearings and citizens assemblies are not the actions of science; they are the actions of “defenders of the faith”.

Geoffrey Lean – Consulting Editor on the environment for the (UK) Daily Telegraph on the formation of “another” panel (six conservationists and one businessman) said this week;

"William Lewis [the Telegraph editor] has asked me to help redefine its environmental coverage and policies and I am enormously looking forward to taking up the opportunity."

I think it was the words “coverage and policies” that gave it away. Good to know that MSM is supporting the intelligencia by defining policies that will finally take control of the News. I guess what makes the Jesuits so amusing is their predictability. Still, they will be happy that they have so many gullible followers, but I guess they always did.

mikk, call it what you will and I know some people feel better if they can get away with insults on OLO, calling someone a denier is certainly intended as an insult (as in holocaust denier).

Regardless of the insult, it does nothing to advance the belief of AGW, simply berating people is unscientific, calling on authority is unscientific, but that's all we ever see on OLO.

We also get demands that skeptics "prove" AGW isn't happening, as above, it is up to the proposers to prove it and all they do is point to "overwhelming evidence" piles which do not prove it, they point to related papers but again, no proof - they say we simply refuse to see it - but please refer me to a paper that proves increasing CO2 is causing increasing world temperature, that's all we keep asking for - where is it?

BTW - the evidence may be "unequivocal" you, but clearly it does not overwhelm a vast portion of the population of the world, otherwise Copenhagen would have succeeded, wouldn't it?

Your little dummy spit - "To deny it is to blind ones self in a stupid and selfish display of dogmatic hubris and ignorant inhumanity"

Is about as close to religious "superiority" as you could get.

Is it any wonder when we see displays like Mikks that AGW believers get called religious fanatics.

Bring on the inquisition Mikk, we can all see you'd just love to!

Emotional yes, rational, I think not.

“I dare any pollsters to conduct an Australia-wide survey and ask people how global warming works or how a carbon emissions trading scheme would operate.”

Better still, and more to the point, ask Julia Gillard how it works – she wouldn’t know. Gillard is going to pick 150 people off the electoral roll to tell her. What a load of rubbish! Even Rudd would not have dreamed of pulling such a silly stunt. She could get 150 morons, 150 warming alarmists or 150 people who think GW is a load or rot, and nothing should be done. It is highly unlikely that she will get 150 rational, thinking and intelligent people from such a silly lucky dip.

Where did the figure of 150 come from? Since when did 150 unknown people speak for the rest of us?

Julia Gillard is barking mad. And the latest polls say that she will get in with a landslide! That makes the majority of voters barking mad, too.

I don't think that the more radical sections of the environment movement are alone in their scaremongering re the end of the world. For 30 years the media has been fascinated with doomsday cults, earth smashing meteorites, tidal waves (real or imagined) and all things nasty.

It's easy to make the jump that people are the problem especially if you tie it in to systems thinking and chaos theory where everything is connected to everything else, although there is considerable tension between these two ideas.

I consider myself a climate sceptic but I'm willing to endorse and let people act on a precautionary principle ie, lowering carbon emissions. I'm far less convinced about population (I'm with Latham) in Oz and rising sea levels.

Dear Fellow Human

Let me take you away from this land of Humpty Dumpty and cucumbers made of moonbeams to a land where sweet reason prevails and people laugh and smile and try to help each other. It's called RealClimate.org. It is a very well structured website that is run by climate scientists but much of the stuff is accessible (in an intellectual sense) to laypeople and beginners. They even let anyone blog, but it is moderated, so you have to be good mannered and try to stick to the subject at hand.

It's doubtful if you'll meet a lot of other OLO-ers there, because the above- mentioned conditions don't seem to suit their nature.