Barry Brooks, as I said a few days ago, it's not all about non-climate scientists trespassing on your domain, it's about AGWers depending on statistical methods and econometric modelling which have been irrefutably shown by experts in those fields to be wrong. By your own criteria, you should be deferring to their expertise, not ignoring ("denying"?) them. Have you read the C-H and related critiques and the IPCC's non-response? As someone who has directed economic modelling of the economic impacts of global warming (I first proposed such a study in 1990), I still await your response.

("Irrefutably"? I sound like a global warming advocate! But I have seen no reasoned response to the criticisms.)

Don,

In reading your most recent response to Barry, at what point in time do you think the scientific community overturned the then prevailing orthodoxy to what we have today? And, being a political scientist, do you think the major hurdle in ‘dealing with climate change’ is more to do with politics and economics, rather than the science itself?

Barry,

You say “active and forthright public communication of science is not only an obligation of scientists, but a critical necessity.” Admirable, but this is easier said than done. The ‘run-of the-mill’ scientists just want to do their job, maybe publish their work (in the appropriate journals for their peers to critique) and otherwise live a normal life.

You know there are a lot of ‘internet armchair pseudo-scientists’ out there who don’t understand the scientific process (let alone the nuances of the science). They intentionally (or not) misrepresent or distort the science. This can be very confusing for the casual observer.

Is it not better to explain the science to the masses by the scientific bodies, institutions or academies that represent the scientists’ science? I am sure these bodies can employ real science journalists to explain the implications in lay terms.

for Q&A: Two interesting questions, and I'm not sure of the right response to the first. We have orthodoxy in re AGW today because the IPCC was set up by governments to provide answers to human-induced global warming, and it has provided, if not answers, then 'forecasts'. Before about 1988, as far as I can see, the AGW question was not central to governments, and while it still isn't central, it has become an important political issue at the level of the electorate, which forces governments to at least appear to do something and to say the right things. What has happened in the UK recently suggests that the electorate there is not prepared to forego heat and mobility in the interests of abating greenhouse gas emissions, and my guess is that the Australian eelctorate would be pretty similar, if pushed to the test.

Your second question follows naturally. If the science really were settled, then governments would be in a very strong position to say, without risk of instant and respectable disagreement, that AGW was so important that we would all have to pull our belts in. But Treasuries and Finance departments the world over will fight to the end to prevent the reduction in economic growth that would most likely flow from serious carbon taxing. Are you out of your minds? Do you really want to become the next Opposition? would be the questions sent to Cabinet (much more politely, naturally). But to me the science isn't settled. It's conjectural, argumentative, and open to question.

I hope that helps.

"The science is settled ! So there !"

They say that if you tell a big enough lie loudly and often enough
then everyone will believe it.

The fact is the the science is NOT settled as this debate illustrates
but does not prove.

There is just too much argument by people in the science field for the
likes of me to accept that the science is settled.
It is not settled and to call people deniers is to insult them by
inferring its relationship to Nazi concentration camp deniers.

Does any one really understand the scientific process?

Popular media does not help:-
"A cure for cancer"
Well, after we have isolated the relevant genome/chemical and given 100M for clinical trials.
This sort of academic press release does not help.

(Although it might help funding to the authors of the press release)

Better to go to the Hillsong/Church meeting and give my money to them
After all it is God who cures.

Brook starts is article by saying, “Don’t feed the trolls.”

So far 47 of us have fed into his drivel. Allow me to me the next.

My experience of OLO is that the response in number of comments an article gets is not proportionate to its quality. More often the other way round, as the author makes silly comments that are easy to contend with, or just tick people off. I often wonder whether OLO deliberately selects bad articles as it increases participation levels.

In his second paragraph, Brooks takes a cheap pot shot at creationists without in the least way giving any back up explanation or any supporting evidence as to why he thinks they belong in the troll category. He gives no reason to think that he’s ever met a creationist, engaged in one of their arguments, or even looked up the word in the dictionary.

The gist of his ‘article’ is that we should be adhering to ‘good science’ and ignoring the ‘bad’. So how does he define ‘good science’? Well, it’s pretty much defined as anything that Brooks agrees with.

Here’s a Brooks howler, “Good science gradually emerges from the pack.” Really? That’s almost as ingenuous as saying whatever is the popular consensus must be true. Even Bennie is advocating we go with the 99%. Listen, Bennie (if you were serious), in science, and also in life in general, sometimes the 1% who are willing to go against the flow are found to be correct.

Try this one on, “Science has little top-down control on what should and should not be investigated.” Let’s look at the example of the Big Bang. The control over this pet theory is so strong that leading astronomers released a statement, published in New Scientist, May 2004,
http://www.cosmologystatement.org

which says in part, “… young scientists learn to remain silent if they have something to say about the standard big bang model. Those who doubt the big bang fear that saying so will cost them their funding. Even observations are now interpreted through this filter …”