Leigh,

You ask: "Since when did 150 unknown people speak for the rest of us?"

Every so often, for example in a month, the people of Australia elect 150 people, some known, some unknown, to parliament. Within months, it sort of gets down to the business (at least on paper) of making decisions of great and small importance on behalf of the people who elected them. No major delays, no two years of planning and preparation. And, since they are human beings, they differ about issues and rarely come to any sort of consensus.

So, Julia, good luck trying to generate consensus in 2012 from a random 150 people.

And even if they all did agree, which is hardly likely, so what ? Would their consensual decision be binding on parliament, on the elected representatives of the Australian people ? That might create an interesting precedent, one which future governments would be happy to engineer in their search for a 'random sample' of Australians.

And if there is no consensus this time, will we prepare more carefully for another gathering, perhaps in 2015 ? Because it is important not to rush this sort of thing, to get it right.

Yeah, sure.

"Denier" is not an insult it is simply a state of fact.
The evidence of climate change is, to anyone with the slightest intelligence, overwhelming and has been for years.
That these so called "skeptics" are only "skeptical" where it comes to the science of climate change says volumes.
They usually arent skeptical where it comes to godbothering and hell and damnation. They usually arent skeptical where it comes to nuclear science. They support the likes of Monsanto with their monopolistic "science" of GM. They are happy for science to improve their lives and give them more stuff. Happy to live longer and better off the backs of science and scientists.
But when science tells them they might have to drive or fly a bit less or turn the lights off occasionally or god forbid be cold or hot with a bit less air con or heating they get all "skeptical".
Forgive me for being less than courteous to such fools and idiots with their closed and blinkered minds refusing to see what is plainly obvious to anyone with the basics of scientific knowledge. Which we all should posses unless you didnt go to school and youre too lazy to read a bit.
Ignorance is despicable.

Mikk- Just because you are "convinced" does not make the unconvinced fools. Perhaps its you who are wrong, as horrible as that prospect seems. Its the warmists who are preaching damnation, albeit under a new religion. Its they who want to restrict the freedoms of the world to discuss and disagree.Maybe you have never read information from the other side of the ledger? You're being a conspiracy theorist, just as the author describes.

This article is a very good bit of work outlining the current dominance of ideology over reason. Good work, Malcolm.

so jedimaster, why do you bother with OLO when nirvana awaits full of happy people, who laugh and smile and all get along and help each other and .. and .. gush?

No one who disagrees or is skeptical, (in the right way of course)

Where skepticism is redefined as people who .. well, all jolly well get along and all believe together, yes, that's the scientific way isn;t it - and who all gong together to lambast anyone who doesn't belong or believe, in the correct way. No questions please eh.

Gosh, it just sounds so .. wonderful!

?

Mikk "The evidence of climate change is, to anyone with the slightest intelligence, overwhelming and has been for years."

So it's all so obvious that much of the world laughs at it, cannot come to agreement on it and could care less - why not have a look at just 2 countries, India and China .. are they all believers, or are they "deniers"

Deniers is an insult, it is a deliberate tool to try to recast skeptics as something else - bad luck buddy, it isn't working, you'll have to do better than just spleen venting to change the world.

Please do keep it up though as the irrational ranting of the truly hysterical and sarcastic to skeptics, just reflects the desperation and deceit of science losing its way in the climate segment.

Dear rpg

The psychological term for your latest contribution is "projection":

"the unconscious act of denial of a person's own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, such as to the weather, a tool, or to other people. Thus, it involves imagining or projecting that others have those feelings." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection)

I describe OLO as "Humpty Dumpty" with reference to Alice in Wonderland where Humpty said:

’When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ’it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.’ That quote is frequently used to describe people who make up their own rules as they go along.

I cited some definitions of sceptic and cynic in my first post (page 2), pointing out that I thought that the words were being used incorrectly. Scientists take definitions very seriously- how can we make confident statements about the world of unless we agree that we are talking about the same thing?

In my view, if we can't agree on basic definitions, then we may as well just give up. Our civilisation is built on consensus in laguage.

Do I need to remind you how the anti-AGWs jumped on words like "hide" when they were used loosely by CRU scientists in their "Climategate emails". If they have to be scrupulous in their use of language, then why shouldn't you?

Why do I persist with OLO? Good question. Maybe it's an internet equivalent of the "food miles" debate- I try to participate locally, forever hopeful that the discourse on these important topics doesn't degenerate into a slangfest.

What you don't seem to understand, rpg, is that scientists delight in disagreeing with each other. Finding that somebody got their sums wrong is as exciting as coming up with a new sum, so to speak. Only they are courteous about it.

There is a big difference between a robust debate and trading insults. I hope that you can comprehend the difference

There are climate change skeptics and climate change deniers.

It's really important to distinguish between the two.

Skeptics cop a lot of flack that is probably meant for deniers. The two seem to have become conflated.

Like Abbott's statement that climate change is "crap." That's the kind of emotional and irrational statement a denier would make, not a skeptic.

As for Gillard's 150 off the electoral roll - now she's seriously insulting the voters if she thinks that's going to do anything but make us all laugh like drains.