Chris, the issue is whether Peiser has withdrawn or not. There is no dispute that he has withdrawn his original particular criticism on the basis of the 1117. That doesn't logically mean that because he has narrowed down the search from 1117 to 928 does not mean that 34 becomes zero, which is what would have to be the case for him to withdraw his general criticism of Oreskes. Media Watch say that he has, but don't document it. Lambert asserts that Peiser has withdrawn. I write to Peiser and he says he hasn't. Bolt is wrong, and so is Lambert.

David Lambert, I am tired of the smears that I am somehow anti-science. Your post demonstrates that you are the one who is anti-science. You dismiss Hughes' work on the basis that he is one of the "anti-science crowd". Hughes is in fact a scientist who is prepared to go looking for the evidence for the pronouncements that others make. He is an empiricist, and empiricism is at the heart of science. What makes him "anti-science" to you? It appears to be that the evidence he finds doesn't concur with your prejudices.

Neither does the quantifiable evidence on how scientists write papers and abstracts. The reason I did the word count was to demonstrate that.

You also appear to have problems with the concept of joint authorship. If you jointly author a paper with another academic, as I have, you do not have the luxury of walking away from the conclusions just because the other author wrote them. Whatever was in that paper, it doesn't matter whether Revelle or Singer wrote it, they wrote the piece together.

Mercurious, nice word play, but completely beside the point. "Falsification" and "disproof" are exactly the same thing in and they don't have different temporal aspects. I'm not sure that you understand exactly what climate models are.

Some parts of climate models definitely meet the Popperian criteria (and no David Latimer, I don't have a problem with Popper, that's a pretty strange assertion to make). Those parts are things like the ability of CO2 to absorb and re-radiate energy in the infra-red spectrum. But there are a whole lot of assumptions about relations between phenomena and mathematical fudges that don't meet those criteria. A model is more an experiment than a scientific theory.

The Fraser Institute has just published a (peer reviewed for those of you who think this matters) summary of the IPCC papers http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/admin/books/files/Independent%20Summary.pdf. These pars from it might help:

" The hypothesis that greenhouse gas emissions have produced or are capable of producing a significant warming of the Earth.s climate since the start of the industrial era is credible, and merits continued attention. However, the hypothesis cannot be proven by
formal theoretical arguments, and the available data allow the hypothesis to be credibly disputed.

Arguments for the hypothesis rely on computer simulations, which can never be decisive as supporting evidence. The computer models in use are not, by necessity, direct calculations of all basic physics but rely upon empirical approximations for many of the smaller scale processes of the oceans and atmosphere. They are tuned to produce a credible simulation of current global climate statistics, but this does not guarantee reliability in future climate regimes. And there are enough degrees of freedom in tunable models that simulations cannot serve as supporting evidence for any one tuning scheme, such as that associated with a strong effect from greenhouse gases." p.8

Models are indeed subject to scientific doubt, and any discussion about them should use words like "may" and "probably". That doesn't mean that all scientific discussions do. There is no doubt that CO2 re-radiates infra-red spectrum energy, for example. "May" indicates scpeticism, beyond the general proposition of falsifiability.

Although I appreciated YOUR personal opinion of Australian scientists very much, David Latimer, some personal acquaintance with relevant issues forces me to admit that a language-accent-as-a-criterion-of-intelligence fighter, Col.Rouge is much closer to the Australian academy reality reflecting a pitiful state of socio-political affairs in general.

As already mentioned on these pages, Australia's scientists are on a wrong path if a recent UN report on a global warning, a brainchild of Melbournian professor, had been supported by them overwhelmingly.

You need to be fair Grahame. You are not anti-science, but I am critical of your description of scientific abstracts as doubting anthopogenic global warming, when they do not. I suggest this is NOT dishonest but perhaps coloured by the political debates which surround us every day.

EG today, Labor is making hay from John Howard's gaff. This unfair, as the PM's explanation was prompt and reasonable. OK, politicians will be politicians, but we do not want scientists to write abstracts adopting or adjusting to political circumstances.

Grahame asks why I think Warrick Hughes is anti-science. According to his website he is a "free lance earth scientist from Australia. Exposing situations where unsound science is used to prop up fashionable and expensive policy notions, usually policy coloured a shade of Green."

He is as entitled to declare himself an (amateur?) scientist as anyone, but as I have reiterated in post after post, science is not political. In the Soviet Union, academics were forced put Bolshevism before all else. Real scientific work was dismissed as "bourgeois" or "fascist". The result was Lysenkoism, a rejection of Genetic theory for a set of impractical notions, resulting in great famine.

So, I'll defend science whether it explains inheritance or climate change.

Grahame wants to stand by his idea that using the word "may" indicates doubt. Great! Let's see where that takes us: According to Grahame 15 abstracts from here "http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/Oreskes1994.htm" use the word 'may'. There are 44 abstracts listed, so in Grahame's interpretation at least one-third of papers doubt their own conclusions. Wow!

After more than 180 posts, we are in a good position to refect on how we have responded to scientific literature. We'll see if Grahame wants to go round in circles, but he has yet to come up with one abstract showing doubt in anthopogenic global warming. The irony is that Chris and I have already pointed to that one abstract from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists which expresses clear doubt. From 900+ well-reviewed abstracts, is there another?

David Latimer:

"So, I'll defend science whether it explains inheritance or climate change."

Lysenko was then explaining his ideas with not less conviction than local university minders did/do their politically-motivated seemingly-scientific delusions: a big Nth.America-originated deception called "twin boy to a girl sex-change" lasted about thirty years, and resent scientifically-looking tales, up to the UN level, are a synonymous continuation of.

Mr Morgan, you say "we have a minority of mostly non-scientists who are promoted by some pretty obvious interest groups to present a countervailing view, which typically amounts to introducing some degree of doubt about the interpretation of semantic aspects of some report or article, and thus claiming that the overall theory is unproven."

I think Robert Lindzen, Prof of Meteorology at MIT, for one example, qualifies as a scientist, is not promoted by some obvious interest group, and is not motivated by semantic pedantry simply to confuse or introduce doubt. Have you ever considered that maybe he just actually disagrees with a lot of the science, from his expert position, and has an honest duty to stand by what he believes? Scientists of his standing should not be summarily dismissed because they happen to disagree