When have skeptics been banned? It is a defence skeptics have from skeptics skeptical of skeptics. What is being scrutinised is the concept of global warming as a philosophy.It is afterall the age of relativism - post modernist drivel to allow the possibility that the superstitious are not paranoid but are prophets.The data which has demonstrated climate change (CC) to not only be real but anthropogenically driven has not been addressed. The connection between cause and effect is often over looked by climate change skeptics who seek either the flat earth explanation that there is no climate change or the pied piper explanation that there is climate change but its through magic or voodoo, not pollution.
The question I would like to ask of Richard and CC skeptics is what is your motivation? Because if I had to answer in the absence from an answer I could only assume it is some sort of ego trip, to come up with the cork screw theory that nobody came up with and to be a science hero.
Science is abandoned by CC skeptics , there will be no Nobel prizes in their xmas stockings.
I would like to add we should not blame the skeptics for the choices our governments have made in ignoring anthropogenic driven CC over the past 25 years. It was/is their choice their incompetence to ignore the causes of CC given the real information that was at their disposal for at least the last 20 years.

Here's the latest bit of trivia:

PM Howard has come under fire in his selection of the 12 person carbon emissions trading task force.

The committee comprises of Qantas chair, BHP director, Foreign Affairs secretary, Treasury secretary, representatives from BHP Billiton, Xstrata and Alumina, secretary of the PM and cabinet etc.

And not an environmentalist in sight nor even an atmospheric scientist! I think that's what one would call a "stacked" task force!

Which leads me to conclude that: "The more things change, the more they remain the same".

Polluter pays? I think not!

Dear Mr Castles,

How does your fundamentalist-relativist dichotomy apply to PM Howard, in his appointment of members of a Carbon Emissions Task Force?

Certainly the National Farmers Federation feels left out - I doubt that they would go so far as to allege any form of censorship in the PM's actions, though it might be argued that his fait accompli has prevented important stakeholders from having their say.
(see http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200612/s1809769.htm)

As for myself, I like the comparison of the PM to the Easter Bunny.
Say this mythical creature is given the job of solving the problem of famine in Africa: I would not be surprised if he came up with a solution involving lots of chocolate and hardboiled eggs, to be delivered at the end of Lent - - -

Farmers would be an obvious choice to leave out because they are the first victims of climate change.