Clive "never" is a big word. Ignore the editor if you must but stay with us please. We need everyone on board and it is because of the two extremes we find ourselves frustrated by the swings.

Your value is that you are capable of "standing-up" for what you believe regardless of who they are. We need your critical eye and we all need to stay at the table.... we have come so far, now is not the time to leave.

Graham writes a good article and like yourself he is human. He trys to cut a middle but no one can do that .... especially when the lay-facts are spun as they are.... in this society.

My own faith is with people.... and heartfelt for those who have less then us yet have much more to loose. ie: The voices of the Small Island Pacific, whose lands are disappearing faster than can be explained by rises in sea level....

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/radioeye/stories/2008/2284109.htm

We lost and dislocated entire tribes and tribes of world families through bloody wars, and now we navel graze as if we still have "the" time.

I say get it together boys, no moment is more essential than now.

http://www.miacat.com/
.

Onya Country girl. What a lovely comment. I haven’t read your articles but I’m interested (under what name are they published?). I don’t believe having letters after your name should be a prerequisite to contributing. If the substance is there, it shouldn’t matter who is saying it. Given the examples set by some here, I worry more about the standards in our academies than the alleged demise of OLO. Note that Clive, eg, doesn’t respond in any way to the actual claims made by Harris & McKean.

When it comes to predictive accuracy, according to Philip Tetlock’s longterm study on cognitive-style bias and political judgment, education, years of experience, academic vs non-academic, and access to classified material was of little significance. (Strongest correlation was slightly negative in relation to fame. i.e. more fame, less success. Paging Dr Flannery.)

Tetlock found that “experts” still generally did little better than “chimps” in predicting future outcomes (although flexible “foxes” did better than single-minded “hedgehogs”, and moderates better than extremists - most interesting was that whilst hedgehogs benefit from getting over their fixed lines of thought, open-minded foxes could actually be hindered by becoming too open-minded.) Anyway, this alone should be reason enough to continue to question the claims to certainty in climate science. Experts were good, however, at justifying after the event why they didn’t get it right. At the moment some AGWers are claiming la nina as the reason for current cooling. I would have thought something as influential as that would have already been factored into the models. Dr Pauchari even conceded there may be some unknown natural factors at work!

An excellent article in yesterday’s Fin Review by Freeman Dyson on the costs and effectiveness of differing approaches to reducing atmospheric carbon. A balanced academic review, he concludes with a reiteration of the importance of open debate, not the deaf talking to the deaf:

“Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, [sceptics’]
arguments on these issues deserve to be heard.”

Graham Young in a knock-out.

PS. rstuart, there’s nothing wrong with changing your mind.

The point of the argument which totally escapes Clive Hamiliton and many of the AGW exponents,is not the belief in or the reality of Global Warming,but the right of ordinary folk to question the science and not be brow beaten into submission by those who think that they are the fountain of all knowledge and wisdom.

If CO2 is the culprit or is warming actually ocurring,we do not know for sure.One thing is certain,we need a measured reponse since panic,knee jerk reactions will certainly hurt us more than the major polluters like the US, China,India or Europe.The cure could well be worse than the disease.

Kevin Rudd wants to save the planet on his white steed by Australia leading the assault since he thinks we will be most affected.Well we did the same in WW1 and suffered unnecessary catasrophic deaths and casualities.Most of our small pop live by the ocean and will be no more affected than the US or parts of Africa.Another furphy.

All Kevin is looking for is a distraction from his economic woes since his incompetence is driving us into a serious recession.

Implement the Garnaut report and Labor will be gone for at least another decade.Perhaps it's time for a new party to rise from their ashes that actually represents the will of the people.

I had the mouse button above Graham Young’s article but before I clicked I thought about what I was hoping might be addressed.

The first was Graham’s attack on Robyn Williams. Clive Hamilton cites it as the issue that prompted his opinion about Graham and OLO ultimately leading to his withdrawal as a contributor. He wrote “My suspicions that On Line Opinion had been captured were prompted in May when chief editor Graham Young published a vigorous attack on Robyn Williams for one snide remark he made about climate change "sceptic" Don Aitkin.”

Unfortunately this pivotal matter was not mentioned by Graham except very obliquely.

My second thought was a hope that the article was going to be restrained in acknowledgement that Clive was not going to be replying.

Unfortunately Graham couldn’t do it. Words like “Clive then misrepresents people”, “eschews facts”, “He trots out untruths”, “Of course, a lot of Clive's argument isn't unethical”, “forfeited any right to take part in this debate”, were a diatribe for mid-stoush rather than the last word, and even then I’m doubtful it would have been appropriate. Unfortunately the impression left is of cowardness.

Here was an opportunity for Graham to have shown 'grace' in his response (some from his side of politics can confuse this with political correctness) yet he failed.

In my response to Clive’s article I wrote about the fact that Graham had asked Clive for a final piece, “Maybe it is the idealist in me but I am going to choose to believe Graham that you did this for all the right (not Right) reasons since it was pretty obvious with the large number of vitriolic climate change sceptics among the forum members that Mr Hamilton was going to cop a pasting.”

I’m not sure I’m prepared to continue with that belief.

Pity.

Richard Castles: "PS. rstuart, there’s nothing wrong with changing your mind."

This made me laugh. It tickles my sense of irony. I normally a spend a lot of time trying to write thoughtful yet provoking comments. This effort is almost always a dismal failure - no one notices. And then thinking of nothing much, I write a 2 line idle observation. And it garners three references - two on a different thread(!)

For the record, what I said was:
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

I stumbled across this post from Graham, evidently made in a different era:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=154#2803

How times change. Perhaps they will change again, and Clive will see way clear to contribute again to OLO.

The argument of global warming causes is lost to smug academia again in its perverse assumption that their opinion may matter. Thank God for the divorced concern of Mother-nature towards humanity, in her relentless march towards a scorching waterless barren rock, adrift in outer space, (forever devoid of academic argument).

For me, I shall continue to reside high above current sea levels, surrounded by “hill-bellies” whose opinions also count for naught. But something that I did find interesting in Clives book “ Scorcher” was his expose on Government subsidies to Alcoa and other aluminum smelters in Australia amounting to 40% of the total cost of electricity production in Australia. So, do we, as a community, continue to change light bulbs to save power?