Loudmouth,

"...Shove your elitism."

Nicely constructed narrative you and cohenite have conjured up lately - 'ordinary people', 'proles', 'yobs', 'bogans'...it somehow reminds me of Howard dog-whistling the 'battlers' while stealing Pauline Hanson's support base - shame he slapped them with Work Choices as reward for their gullibility.

"A more-or-less democratic society" spends a great deal educating and training its population. When a section of that population, namely climate scientists, find agreement of global warming they are pilloried....go figure?

Joe, I don't give the least toss if you judge you know better. If elitism means looking to those trained in science for answers on science then so be it.

You're the guy who keeps trumpeting the success of university enrollments for indigenous Australians. I hope none of them take up chemistry or oceanography or geophysics - you'd be the first to inform them their educated opinion is crap if the yobs don't agree with it.

(save your pathetic sarcastic smiley face at the bottom of your posts for someone who cares)

Poirot, I still await your justification of Gillard raising power prices with RET and the carbon (sick) tax and then complaining about rising power prices. Do come clean, or risk being called as much of a hypocrite as la Julia.

Poirot says:

"'ordinary people', 'proles', 'yobs', 'bogans'"

What a snob you are Poirot; I have represented many clients in court and the ones who are always more difficult are the elites who have an ego investment in their cause which always greatly exceeds an occasional inattention by the "ordinary people" in producing difficulty with the conduct of the matter.

You then say this:

"A more-or-less democratic society" spends a great deal educating and training its population. When a section of that population, namely climate scientists, find agreement of global warming they are pilloried...."

A couple of things here; firstly there is a strong push amongst that population and its supporters to suspend democracy so there is a strong elelment of hypocritical biting of the hand by the 'climate scientists'.

Secondly, even if you are right, and I raise the cases of Clive Spash Phil Watson and Doug Lord, all scientists working in the likes of the CSIRO and other government agencies who were chastised, fired or otherwise 'dealt with' for expressing publically evidence and doubt about AGW, about the great consensus amongst government funded bureacracies and academia isn't it the case that this consensus may be merely the usual enforced conformity inherent in such bureacracies to some extent?

Until independent analysis of climate science is done which also shows the validity of the evidence relied upon by that science then the reasonable doubt remains. Of course an independent analysis of the IPCC has been done by the IAC which found the scientific standards of the IPCC were unacceptable.

Do you entertain the slightest doubt that your position is untenable at all?

cohenite,

My reference to 'ordinary people', 'proles', 'yobs', etc. was in response to Loudmouth, who employs them perennially as props for his sarcastic replies. I merely noted that you too have picked up on "the elite vs real people" strategy.

Okey-dokey - let's all wait while the non-climatologists analyse the climate science.

Tell Mr Tiddler I haven't got time to argue politics - family duties prevail (and it's the maid's night off!!)

Poirot,

Oy. I look forward to the time when the majority of people are university graduates, across every field, men and women, Black and White and everything in between, and that they can speak with the authority of their expertise, with each other, and realise the need to explain their theories to the rest of society, in a respectful fashion.

Here are some simple questions, Poirot:

* average world temperature has risen by 0.9 degrees in the past century - yes ? no ?

* sea-levels have risen by around two inches in the last century - yes ? no ?

* average world temperatures haven't risen by anything much in the laast fourteen years. Yes ? No ?

* there are a range of remedies that might mitigate the awful effects of Global Luke-Warming and CO2 poisoning, from nuclear power to tree-planting to switching of the kitchem light, etc. Yes ? No ?

I want to believe in the dreadful danger of CO2 poisoning our atmosphere as much as the next leftie, or Green Party member, but I'm simply too old and grumpy, I've had too many kicks in the nuts, to believe every guru and BS artist that comes along. The melting of the Himalaya glaciers by 2035, in 23 years, was a good one and I was on the verge of flying over to Sydney and putting in a bit for the Bridge when I did some very crude calculations about adiabatic whatever and worked out that, at an average of 18,000 feet, the Himalayan glaciers would melt when the temperature rose by some impossible amount, 500 degrees or something weird like that. That can't be right. But certainly, a rise of two or five degrees would still leave most glaciers intact: the smow line would retreat by how much ? 600 to 1500 metres ? Correct me if I'm wrong :)

And I do apologise for those irritating smiley faces.

:)

Definition of 'ordinary' in Penguin Dictionary.
'Routine or usual; customary; not exceptional; commonplace'.
Attributes I would hardly deem as desirable when debating current issues or framing the future of the world.