Defending an appeal to absent authority with more appeal to absent authority, ho hum. This is the warmists' idea of proving their assertions which the temperature and CO2 data keep not proving.

The most that could be said of your methodology is that it is a secondary and subsidiary method of knowledge. It seeks to know whether, or assert that, the world faces catastrophic man-made global warming that policy could improve, by placing implicit faith in the pronouncements of authorities who all JUST HAPPEN to be government-funded.

Then when called on this tactic, we get this wide-eyed innocent "What? Us? Say that?" They are even so delicate they decline the very name of warmists. What will satisfy you then? "Those-who-allege-that-the-planet-is-not-going-to-be-habitable-by-our-grandchildren-because-of-catastrophic-manmade-global-warming-that-government-can-save-us-from-at-reasonable-cost-which-voluntary-action-could-not-provide,-but-whom-it-is-rude-to-name-warmists"? Give us a break.

You're just evidencing all the defining religious characteristics:
- assuming it's true in the first place and seeking to confirm it
- when challenged, referring off to the absent authority of a morally superior superbeing monopoly corporation
- when challenged on that, conducting the discussion on the basis that the question is to be decided by mere faith in authority. Give us a break.

As for Agronomists jibe about "conspiracy", this is just a stock-standard misrepresentation = fallacy. I didn't say it is a conspiracy, and there is no need to resort to conspiracy theory to explain the interests of a industry of government dependants on HUGE government funding, durr. But in any event, anyone unaware of agreement at the highest levels of government to use global warming as a pretext for the expansion of governmental powers, is not qualified to participate in the discussion.

Even if it were not laughable for the warmists' to pretend that the government is of no significance to the exertion of interests in the knowledge in issue, still we are left with the fact that their entire argument is only, why don't the skeptics join us in our open-ended mere credulity?

We *know* the authorities support the warmists! The problem is, the TEMPERATE AND CO2 DATA don't support them.

The extent to which human caused CO2 emissions may warm the planet has been generally overstated by the warmists. But the temperature change is not important. It is irrelevant to the policy analysis. It is irrelevant to the justification for the “actions” that the warmists keep demanding (like carbon pricing and renewable energy and the other $20 billion per year we are wasting on carbon restraint policies.

What is relevant is 1) the impacts of climate change at a regional level 2) the economic consequences of climate changes, 3) the probability that advocated policies will succeed.

The probability that the proposed policies will succeed is really important. Warmists have been encouraging governments to impose enormously damaging and wasteful policies to reduce carbon emissions. But the policies almost certainly will not succeed. To understand this better, see my ‘Submission 2’ to the Senate inquiry into repeal of the carbon tax legislation http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Clean_Energy_Legislation/Submissions. This explains why:
1. Carbon pricing cannot succeed unless it is global and unless a high proportion of global GHG emissions (e.g. 80%) are included in the pricing scheme (nsee Figure 1: “Abatement cost penalty (ratio to complete participation) versus participation rate”)
2. Global carbon pricing is unlikely to succeed
3. The costs and benefits of Australia’s carbon pricing scheme to 2050 (from Treasury’s economic analyses)

Peter
Thanks for that. Yes as soon as we consider costs we are able to enter into a zone of rationality where we can see both sides of the equation in units of a lowest common denominator. We can see things in relative proportion, the ‘ratio’ (Latin for reason) which gives us rationality, or enables it.

But you are too kind to note it won’t work in practice, just as one would be to argue that compulsory tithing won’t save our souls “in practice”. The problem is it can’t succeed even in theory. We can rationally demonstrate from the initial spending on science that the alleged net benefit is at best unknowable, and at worst positively false and fraudulent; and the statists have no answer but endless circularity.

This is what Mises effectively demonstrated in 1920 in ‘Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth’ which completely destroyed the intellectual foundations of all socialism and which the socialists went ahead and ignored at the cost of 200 million deaths, just as the warmists ignored it and have now utterly wasted hundreds of billions of dollars that could have gone to improving human beings’ lives. And they still don’t get it! They just keep banging away with the same old failed theory and failed demands.

The problem is that while the warmists are weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth over the supposed costs of alleged global warming, we get this blithe complete ignorance towards the huge costs of all their activity = irrational. Suppose the warmists on this thread were forced to pay the costs of even one day of one committee, of one layer of one government in one country, we would soon see them change their tune I’ll warrant. It is only the fact they are able to throw off the costs into the governmental ether that enables this kind of irrational, vain, corrupt, anti-human behaviour.

“However, I do see a need for state funding for basic science research.”

What could be more basic than measuring the air temperature, and attempting to discern patterns in it using computer models?

My poor expression above. 97% of papers show reality of global warming / climate change. 3% of papers written by climate change researchers do not support that view. In my mind, 97% most probably reflects reality. Majority of deniers (or, as they prefer, sceptics - an incorrect use of the word) can only point to the 3% of papers mentioned above. However, as a couple of other articles on this forum demonstrate, those arguing against the reality of climate change resort to myth, innuendo and character assasination.

Jardine, your comment

"This is the warmists' idea of proving their assertions which the temperature and CO2 data keep not proving"

shows a deep lack of knowledge and the science. To make such a statement without any reference to associated research, demonstrates myth making and promulgation that makes all of your arguments and logic valueless.

Tony
More assuming what is in issue, appeal to absent authority, and personal argument from a warmist, ho hum.

No it's not some kind of strange coincidence. It's all they've got.

Your repetition of it proves my point, not yours.

All
The warmists' endless repetition of these tactics, identified over 2,000 years ago as fallacies, and the fact the whole belief system is an artefect of government funding, is not some kind of strange coincidence either.