for rstuart: I'm sorry, I didn't answer your last question. No, I don't know of any studies that point one way or the other. Wikipedia is very new. To the best of my knowledge, university teachers at three universities known to me warn their students not to use Wikipedia as a reference. I have to say that I find it most useful as a first stop, but usually go further.

for bushbasher: You can't see anything abusive or ad hominem in what you wrote? Let me remind you. You 'quit in disgust', 'you don't give a damn', and you find what I have said 'clumsy', 'snide', 'cheap', 'dumb', 'flippant', 'unsubstantiated,' and 'slandering'. What do you regard as 'abusive' ? One of my teachers, Russel Ward, once warned me to be careful of adverbs and adjectives. If what I wanted to say needed them, I should think again. It was good advice.

OLO has gotta change its name to Irony Central.

"A cool look at Professor Aitkin’s global warming scepticism..."

Then...
"Professor Aitkin proceeds to play the people instead of the ball..."

Too funny.

What a great example of good scientific focus on the subject.

And this outstanding nugget...
"However there are other equally important questions lurking behind this debate, such as whether it would really be so hard for us to change our lifestyle, whether such changes would have other benefits, and whether we must change anyway, for reasons other than global warming."

Woohoo. Nary a logical fallacy to ponder.

In other words, when the forces of gravity were not well understood, people shouldnt walk off cliffs. Revealling.

You dont need to confound people with expansive technical articulations of gravity to impart the value of not walking off cliffs.

Doing so, smells of hidden agenda, raising our natural doubt and questioning nature. Maligning that basic tendency is ignorant and fishy. And to start calling them names like 'denialist' or 'true believer' are merely veiled backhanders attempting to drown the clear thinking in favour of emotive appeals, by making veiled inferences to holocaust denial or religious zealotry.

You cant get into the ad hom game without falling on your own sword. The only way to deal with it is to stay on point, being purely rational and in this case scientific.

The pro camp would do well no to be drawn into the ad hom nonsense, as its playing against them very badly. They're already at a disadvantage, doing all the hard work of supporting their claims. Which isnt easy to do in the face of a natural tendency to doubt claims about the unknown. It takes much effort to build something and very little to knock it over.

The pro camp take it all so personally and are heavily invested in their views. The (gravy) train is already pulling out, there are myriad things being done at the public and private levels regarding our poluting ways. Its doubtful that any of thats gonna abate in the face of generalised skepticsm.

Geoff Davies

Whenever I make a post on climate change I always refer to the fact that over-exploitation and pollution are ignored while the debate rages on as to whether climate change is anthropogenic or not.

Time and time again this 'elephant in the room' is completely ignored by both sides of the argument. Will we continue the ad hominem attacks on each other, while business still continues as usual?

If this absurd game of 'I'm right; you're wrong' continues, we deserve whatever the environmental result will be of our egocentric games.

Let Rome burn then. This argument is absurd and nothing more than a smoke-screen to prevent us from taking any positive action towards cleaning up our methods and reaching a sustainable level of existence.

mercurius,

"How about: "We can't predict what number will come up on the next roll of the dice, so probability theory is bogus"?"

Fair enuff, but do we wanna bet the whole house on the next roll.

"Predicting the results of one million throws of the dice is climate science."

Thats fine too, if it were only one roll of one die. The probabilities become rather more complex and the odds of successfully predicting outcomes widens considerably when the previous roll has an effect on the next roll (not so with die, each roll being independent) and there are millions of rolls in the predictive sequence.

"1-in-6 chance you have of predicting the next throw of the dice!"
Again, thats fine for 'a die.' There is no 1-in-six chance when its 'dice.' At the very least its 1-in-36 (2 freckled twins), 1-in-216 (3 freckled triplets) and so on, the odds widening very quickly and considerably from here on.

Predicting the probabilities of climate, with its many constantly shifting, intra-dependent variables, is like trying to predict the outcome of say a million monkeys throwing 100 dice each, some without numbers on their faces, some of the time. And with some of the monkeys playing with loaded die.

Geoff Davies “Would anybody be interested in a CONSTRUCTIVE, POSITIVE exploration of this? Or is this site only for crapping on things and people you have an instant negative emotional reaction to?”

Seems to me that is a bit like “Don’t Feed the trolls” comment which lead the Barry Brook “I am a scientist and you are not allowed to express an independent opinion” article.

I would suggest the constructive and positive exploration is coming from the skeptics, by challenging the dogmatic mantra of AGW modelers.

I would suggest the negativity and troll like actions are the product of pro-AGWists who lack the reasoning skills to counter with logic and thus descend to vilification and denigration as an expedient.

Ah Dickie, as I said trolls, now Dickie I do recall you cliaiming I myself had promoted support for “cartels”, in an attempt to vilify my view.

I have asked before and will repeat now, where are the quotes which support your vilification?

Until you can present them your view is tainted and before you suggest it again, I am not “stalking you” but merely making you accountable for what you have stated in your posts.

Geoff, in his article is certainly an alarmist AGWer focussing solely on carbon emissions, with perceptions of dramatic acceleration, of tipping points, chain reactions, of toppling of big dominos etc all to do with our elevating to dangerous levels Earth's temperature. This is simply ALARMISM built on the Goracle and it is now long past the time for us to separate climate change fact from hysteria. It is the AGWers that need to constructively/positively prove it correct or abandon this perception as false. i.e. If you are denying natural climate change then prove it with observational evidence.

Geoff, I don't mean to be rude, but even if I was an obnoxious little weed, I would be thankful of all this extra and free CO2 that would allow me to grow healthier, bigger, stronger and greeener. As an alarmist haven't you in fact missed the big pieces of the puzzle when it comes to the Earth’s temperatures and carbon dioxide emissions. i.e. The minimal warming trend of the 20thC just happens to coincide with the greatest advancement of living standards, life expectancy, food production, human health, in the history of our planet. How can this be horrific and mean we are all doomed because of CO2 emissions? Every last scrap of existing scientific evidence confirms overwhelmingly that human CO2 release is good for people and enhances the biosphere/environment. If you find any plausible evidence you are welcome to let everyone know.