Science simply needs good scientists - looking at particularl scenarios and problems from a variety of hypotheses, and with a variety of methods. Some repeatability of methods and studies by different groups, however, is desirable.

Science also involves good communication -
a. being able to articulate hypotheses and how they are derived, often based on past and recently acquired knowledge;
b. outlining methodology
c. discussing conclusions based on the new information and past information, and being able to outline limitations, and being able to outline new areas for research.

A key issue is negative information, and the ideal that that is put in "the literature" for others to use.

Communication also involves putting new studies "in context" in the public domain, and not overstating or understating.

The information about the hockey stick doesn't make climate change false, nor does the present scenario necessarily correlate to the medieval period. It is a question of degree and rate of change, and whether theya re variable, too.

Great Article ..

On confirmation bias, it is constantly chanted by believers that skeptics are funded by the fossil fuel industry .. why there's one regular poster on OLO who claims he can show any skeptic named can be proved to be in the pay of big oil .. right up until you challenge it.

"There is no great fossil-fuel slush fund for skeptics." and that's the big truth that the believers are in denial of, for them, skeptics have to be in the pay of someone, as all correct thinking people are part of the non challenging herd of believers.

Skeptics are the radical thinkers of the new age, they are going against the government and the general trend to the AGW believer state .. when reminded of this, most believers are amazed that they in fact are the "new establishment"

I read recently that global warming is confirmed!(BEST) Amazing! Skeptics wrong! Except that skeptics do believe the world is warming and that climate changes .. it's the cause and proposed "solutions" we question. The believer industry are the trickiest spin merchants in our time, but even with all the billions at their disposal, people are not convinced .. now that's amazing.

Me, climate change, bring it on, I welcome the world's many facets of change and will adapt.

What I find most frustrating is that claims made by alarmists and sceptics cannot be debated in a public forum. This article is a clear challenge to anyone who disagrees to put up or shut up. It would be great to have a forum where the reaction could be observed.

The conclusion that climate sceptics are vilified by alarmists is undeniable. As a sceptic (on many issues) I find the lack of balanced discussion on this topic incredibly annoying.

Socially engineered "mitigation" strategies based on fear driven by "models" that are (apparently) about as reliable as a tea leaf reading will ultimately have to be paid for by several generations of tax payers.

But maybe I'm just showing my own confirmation bias...

This article triggered a lot of confirmation for me.

Whilst I do think that that there is a good case that mankind's activities are and will impact on the climate I've been very bothered by the spin and tricks around this. The determination to tout any extreme weather event as confirmation of AGW (Brisbane floods earlier this year and other events) while ignoring earlier similar or worse events.

I've been bothered by the reports from various scientists and others who've found that refusing to toe the line on AGW has seen them shut out of their career's.

I've been very bothered by the efforts of politicians to use AGW to introduce taxes (or whatever name the spin merchants choose to use) to put more money under their control.

I've been bothered by political promoters of AGW who need to live in mansions and fly around the world in private/government jets to tell us how bad it all is.

I do think that there are a bunch of good reasons to move to more sustainable, fuel sources. Good reasons to find less energy efficient ways of living that maintain a good standard of living (and make that standard of living more achievable for those who don't have it).

I do think that there are some risks that we are not certain of which are worth attention and possibly action.

We do need to ensure that the response is not worse than the credible threat. We do need to ensure that the response has credible outcomes which will help the problem and not just satisfy peoples hunger to "do something" regardless of how pointless that something is.

R0bert

Well I sure hope Matt Ridley is correct.

Because this non-expert will risk one forecast.

We are NOT going to curtail greenhouse gas emissions in any meaningful way. So our children will be able to say whether the forecasts of climate catastrophe turn out ot be correct.

I won't bother to point out some of the inaccuracies in the piece - eg that it was warmer in the middle ages. (It wasn't so far as we know).

Phlogiston is not pseudoscience as the article maintains. It was a reasonable hypothesis at the time. Burned matter was observed to be lighter than unburned matter. Scientists on that basis hypothesised that matter loses substance through the combustion process and called that substance phlogiston. When oxygen was discovered, and it became known that the main combustion products of organic matter were carbon dioxide and water the phlogiston theory was discarded. Scientific theories that are discarded when new theories better describe a process are not pseudosience.

Newton's laws of motion were found inadequate to describe the motion of objects moving near the speed of light. However, Newton's laws of motion were a tremendous advance and did not become pseudoscience when relativistic motion was found to describe motion at all speeds.

If it is found that some entities move faster than the speed of light a new law of motion will supersede relativistic motion.

Pseudosciences like astrology simply have no scientific basis.