cohenite,

Really?...I'm an activist?

You know what the score is in reality.

Climate scientists have been caught on the back foot by the sheer scale an viciousness of the denialist movement. Scientists have usually been able to pursue their work without being subject to personal attacks and withering amateur critiques by people who have little scientific expertise.

That some scientists, against their usual prerogatives, are now taking a stand, is indicative of their frustration at amateurs debasing scientists and the scientific process in order to promote doubt and maintain "business" as usual.

We have whole sites set up to disseminate junk science and ridicule scientists. (Watts and Nova are but two examples)

Why wouldn't some climate scientists take up the stand?

"Why wouldn't some climate scientists take up the stand?"

No reason; as long as they do what Hansen has done and get off the public payroll and don't hide behind scientific or academic impartiality to give imprimateur and authority to their views which are not scientific, at least about AGW.

Dear Anthony,

Graham Young, the owner of this site, writes "If someone tells you that human activity isn’t contributing to global warming they are a nutter, not a skeptic."

http://www.ambitgambit.com/2013/03/25/climate-skeptic-in-charge-of-climate/

Are you a nutter Anthony?

And if you are not then is JKJ?

Do try not to be puerile csteele.

Quite serious actually my dear fellow.

Do you believe that “human activity is contributing to global warming”?

If you do then when approximately did you come to this conclusion?

If you don't then how do you feel being referred to as a nutter?

csteele
The end result remains that you haven't proved the warmist argument or anything near what is sufficient to prove it, and you don't even dare to state what it is - for obvious reasons. All further talk from you is more mere evasion.

cohenite
Since climatology does not, and cannot vindicate the warmists' argument, the issue really bcomes one of psychology. What motivates warmists to propagate their belief system?

For professional intellectuals, dependent on the State, no doubt Leo Tolstoy's quote has explaining power:
“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”

But what explains the non-climatologists who are nevertheless educated people, like Poirot and csteele, actively and persistently clinging to their previous opinions, even knowing that they don't make sense? We know that they know because they have been shown logical disproofs over and over again which they do not and cannot refute, but instead answer with fallacy after fallacy. While mocking the criterion of rationality, they claim to stand for "science"! But science doesn't proceed by circular blind faith, and links to the ABC and the Guardian for gossake LOL!

No-one can be a confused as they are pretending to be. No sir, what we're dealing with here is an ideologically-based commitment to blatant intellectual dishonesty.

So I leave the discussion where I began: pointing out that the warmists have nothing but endless fallacies, have lost the debate over and over again, when challenged instantly descend into personality, and have never in any forum provided evidence or reason to prove their contention that we face catastrophic global warming that policy can improve.