for Rich 2:

Raycom's Nicol quote is sound, but I should answer your point myself.

First, you are raising an argument from authority. I have already said that each of us is allowed to look at the AGW issue and form our own opinion, after reading and thinking. So it doesn't really matter what others think, unless you're not prepared to do that work. In that case you either put the subject out of your mind altogether, and have no opinion, or you follow an authority that appeals to you for some reason. If you do the work, you'll discover that the matter is not nearly so clearcut as it is presented. Then you have to decide where you sit. All those positions I wrote about above have plenty of adherents. The IPCC represents only one of them.

But, second, it simply isn't the case that 97% of scientists agree, or whatever statistic you want to use. No one has ever polled all scientists, or even all climate scientists. The fact that learned academies have expressed opinions doesn't mean that their members all agree with that opinion. In the case of the Royal Society and the American physics body, there have been and are presently disputes within the bodies about ought to be said about AGW.

For my part, I'm not much persuaded that orthodoxy ought always be bowed to, especially after learning that the long and difficult operation I went through to prevent further duodenal haemorrhages was really unnecessary, since my ulcers had been caused by a bacterium, helicobacter pylori. Orthodoxy is usually sound, but it can be wrong from time to time, too. I think it is likely to be shown to have been wrong about AGW, for good reason.

It is worth finding things out for yourself, sometimes.

Raycom,

Dr John Nicol who seems to inspire your comments is chairman of The Australian Climate Science Coalition (ACSC) a climate change skeptics website created by the the Australian Environment Foundation (AEF), a spin-off group created by the the corporate funded think tank, the Institute of Public Affairs. Hardly credible.

You go on to imply that the IPCC is either corrupt or stupid by refusing to consider matters. By implication every other reputable scientific body in the world is equally corrupt or stupid since they all endorse the IPCC view. Much more likely that the scientific view proposed by Dr John Nicol has been considered 100 times and found wanting.

You also imply that the IPCC and others have refused to consider solar influences. That was probably the first thing looked at - you can check out www.skepticalscience.com for an advanced explanation of why solar influences have been discounted.

It is so easy for you to quote one or two so called dissenting views, but you can never point to one reputable scientific body that supports these views and invariably the views you quote tie back to organisations with questionable funding arrangements and political aims. Your comments then normally have a dig at the IPCC and the mainstream scientific community with the suggestion that they are corrupt and deliberately promoting science they know isn't true and suppressing the truth. That means that your conspiracy theory is starting to engulf the entire world community of scientists.

Its hard to know whether you are being deliberately mischievous in your comments or whether you have been unwittingly sucked in by those who fund pseudo science to hoodwink the public and create doubt.

Don

Check out www.skepticalscience.com - think it is number 4 "there is no concensus" for some raw data to address your concerns about the 97% I quoted. I am happy to stick to my comment about the overwhelming majority of scientists agreeing with AGW, and therefore by implication that your view is an extreme one in the scientific community.

I suppose my argument is one from authority but I would note the following:

1. Unless you think the whole scientific community is corrupt there are excellent processes open to those who have a better theory. So far none have emerged. As others have noted be a hero and come up with another theory. There are any number of oil, gas and coal companies and political parties that would love to fund you and promote your findings. If you think the whole scientific community is corrupt then you are in fantasy conspiracy land and I can't help you.

2. While as adults we love to make things complicated anyone can look out the window and "see" the carbon dioxide we are busy pumping into the air - 30 billion tonnes a year I think. Shouldn't be a surprise that CO2 concentrations are going up, and with it temperatures. The basic theory is very straightforward, its not like we are dealing with some arcane branch of science beyond the comprehension of normal people.

3. While orthodoxy can sometimes be wrong the odds here are running at 97:3 in favour of the orthodoxy being right. If you want to bet the planet on a 3% chance that a miracle happens then you are rightly called extreme....

Dr Nicol clearly points out that the IPCC failed to apply scientific method. This is not surprising, as the IPCC approach was based on belief, assertion and output from unvalidated climate models that produced alarmist outcomes -- hardly a scientific, professional, ethical approach.

Nor did socalled scientific bodies apply scientific method, choosing instead to align themselves with the IPCC for political reasons, as they were influenced by environmental activists and politically-motivated governing boards.

Until such time that warmists stop their arrogant denigration, pull their heads out of the sand, and start to consider opposing views carefully, they are the ones who are being deliberately mischievious.

Raycom,

So your arguments boil down as usual to "its all a big conspiracy" by IPCC, every reputable scientific body and those environmentalists. You would rather ignore all that carefully considered and peer reviewed scientific opinion, and common sense based on observations and simple science and throw your lot in with pseudo science sponsored on the quiet by vested interests that cannot pass the simplest scrutiny from professional scientists.

This sentence caught my eye when the latest conspiracies surfaced around Obama's place of birth. He produced his long form birth certificate but that wasn't enough for some "Conspiracy theories have the self-sustaining gift of ramification: they sprout new tendrils, like a mad vine that has invaded from another continent. For the committed conspiracy theorist, there is always another angle to explore, another anomaly to scrutinise."

I hope you enjoy your endless and pointless exploring and scrutiny - however sooner or later the majority public view will recognise reality just as they did with the link between tobacco smoking and cancer. Unfortunately it just takes a while ....

Rich 2:

Head-counts don't prove anything, as Einstein once said. I don't take any notice of them, even of the Oregon list of 31,000 scientists, including 9000 PhDs, who don't agree with AGW.

And as for Skepticalscience, which I have gone to, it is simply a pro-AGW site that tries to find an answer for every objection that sceptics have made. It is not in any way balanced, and some of the reasoning in its entries is awful. Lubos Motl has done a nice piece of surgery on it, which you can read at http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/03/john-cook-skeptical-science.html.

And I think you miss the point about debate. I don't have to have a better 'theory' in order to show that AGW is unpersuasive. The null hypothesis is that the Earth's climate system is subject to a number of forces that cause change, and we do not yet wholly understand those forces and how they interact. I'll call that 'natural variability'. Those arguing that AGW is the primary driver of change need to show that this is indeed the case, and what I do is to point out what I see as errors in their argument and evidence. They may still be right, but so far they have not been able to make their case at all well, and that is after a very large amount of money spent on research. If you like, my theory is that we still do not know enough to start acting as though we do.