Richard,
So if a smoke alarm goes off but you can't see the fire you say: "It's a faulty theory! I'll try to persuade the rest of the family not to worry. I'll look around later when I'm sure there really is a fire."

So you agree that the greenhouse effect has raised the temperature of the planet by 30 odd degrees in the past but the same mechanism no longer seems (to you ) to apply when mankind adds to the load.

SoS,

To push your fire alarm analogy a little further....
Yes you might evacuate the house... thats sensible!
Do you immediately also turn on the sprinkler system?
That would cause a lot of damage and wouldnt that be a shame if the alram turned out to be a false alarm?

Im not getting my knickers in a knot over global warming.....
Why?

Firstly... I am old enough to have heard a lot of people predicting lots of awful things that never happen. Obviously there is a natural tendency for humans to be fearful about the future.

Now.. I hear people predicting global warming with supposed dire consequences. Some are predicting temperature rises of 9+C. But temperatures obviously haven't changed that much.

As for actual measurement of 'global temperature' this seems to be a developing technology... lots of argument about whether they had it right 30 years ago. It seems the business of measuring global temperature is itself changing and the results are producing variations of .3C to about .6C. That isnt very convincing evidence for the models that predict +9C.

But I observe that the method of calculating average global temperatures is changing so I am hardly surprised that the result is changing. Perhaps we are just seeing variations due to measurement and calculation differences. At any rate the numbers are not impressive.

Next the climate models are being refined and 'surprise, surprise' the models predictions are starting to line up with actual measurements and someone says..... "see my model is right"...

Should I be impressed yet?

A (smoke) alarmist response? Seeing how you mention it, my smoke alarm often goes off when there's no fire, just a piece of smoking toast - a source of ongoing frustration. I suppose, regarding climate, the question is whether one hears or sees alarms.

I agree it is a legitimate public concern, too important to shut out experts with differing views, and too important to be dictated by fear. When we have Tim Flannery telling people to imagine 10 storey buildings with water lapping at the roofs, when even the IPCC's highest projection is something like a 59cm sea level rise, give me climateaudit "damping down" public reaction over scare-mongering every time.

Yeah, maybe, Australian experts’ views are different but their incapability to create something practical is not unique.

Let’s better talk of the US.

Richard and wb,
Smoke alarms represent science and technology that we accept without doubting the manufacturers’ competence, motives or the scientific principles. Nor do we assume those who install them are alarmists suffering from some sort of modern, chicken little complex.

(By the way, Richard, I installed the new hard-wired variety. They rarely false alarm compared to the battery-operated ones. Like with so many things, some inconvenience and money solves the problem.)

I bought the alarms from a reputable firm (the smoke alarm equivalent of the IPCC and (what is it, 20 or so?) national academies that have endorsed the theory of AGW). I didn't even think of checking the internet to see if they were shysters. Climateaudit isn’t doing the hard slog of experimental science, which I know from passing experience is tedious, boring and frustratingly slow. Although they pontificate about graphs and give the illusion of being careful, critical-thinkers their expertise is illusory and too light-weight to be balanced against conventional science. It’s true we should listen to the whole range of expert opinion, but we must also carefully assess relative degrees of expertise and experience.

We all have a lot to lose if this issue is wrongly handled either way. We take the fruits of science everyday with both hands. It seems hypocritical to me to try to throw a cordon round one area, ie climate science, and label them scaremongers, politically correct, deluded, whatever, while happily using the science of the internet to communicate our fears that they are wrong.