Yee-ouch! dweezil. Seriously dude get out of the ring. This is getting hard to watch. I mean I'm lovin the spectacle but there are safety issues. Or are you doing thw whole Ali Rumble in the Jungle bit, where your going to come out swinging with something that actually connects soon? From here an apology looks like all you've got left. I like backing the underdog but if their just blowhards, i love seeing a champion belt the wind out of them. Pum-mel-led.

Davids
Thank you for your comments more info on hold points please.
However you analogy is inappropriate. The examples you gave are true but would you take serious medical advice from someone other than a doctor? I wouldn't but I do have a daughter who's into the whole 'alternative thingy'.

Many of the individuals who have harsh anti things to say are akin to your "self interested" examples. The puzzle is who to trust what are opinionated amatuersin highly techical fields.
In most cases on most sites including this one the trick is to follow various commenters to understand their bias. There are rarely clear accessable unbiased comments.

My post are usually based on what I know and utilize the skills I have.Hence In my other post today to IanC I again point out that debate on Literal Global warming is moot and that we NEED a solution to the scientifically endorsed problems and their cumulative effect.
Thanks
Andris

exterminator: I feel the issue of independent validation is in danger of being trivialized by our comments. This is a serious issue that is treated seriously in all areas of endeavor. Of course qualified people are assigned to hold-points, and in my experience they take the independence of their job seriously.

I think people understand that there is a human tendency to let sub-optimal performance slide if the only person checking it is yourself. And so, people opt voluntarily for independent checks. It adds value to their product. However, this process is being spurned and some take it as an affront.

Part of the problem is that when climatologists use models and data processing they are no longer in their area of core expertise and really need more input from statisticians, modelers, computer scientists. Peer review in many cases is no more that a check for 'readability', unless someone is upset enough to take you seriously to task.

I think the worst statistical offenses are in the climate regional effects modeling. The IPCC and global warming domain are another issue. However, it all comes down to regional effects eventually. So it is important to check those studies too.

It is nice to see the sceptics with something. Hopefully the latest idea will leave the peanut gallery and enter the ball park soon. I think it would be great if the models were wrong and Southern Australia wasn't set for more drought.

But what if this latest challenge to the science turns out to be a fizzer like all the others? At what point would sceptics like Ian Castles stop trawling the blogosphere and accept that there might be some truth in the AGW hypothesis?

With due respect,

The issue is not about the science (which is robust, notwithstanding Ian Castles' article)... but rather about how the world’s governments, businesses and communities deal with sustainability problems that they all recognise humanity has.

Current climate change is but a symptom, dealing with it is but an important means to an end.

The difficulty we have is in informing and educating the populace - the policy makers know why we have to deal with it, they (collectively) just don’t know how.

Some try, the latest being Oz's own Professor Barry Brook:

http://bravenewclimate.com/2008/08/07/welcome-to-a-brave-new-climate/

Thanks David Stockwell for your incisive post (14 August 8.36 am). As Sams maligned you earlier for running a 'one-man anti-climate change lobby blog' (9 August, 8.07 pm) I think that it's worth pointing out for the benefit of those who have been following this discussion that Nick Stokes contributed three posts to Niche Modeling's 'Effects of global warming' thread on 7 and 8 August, and six posts to its 'Linear regression example' thread on 14 August – and that Nick Stokes, BSc MSc PhD is listed on CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences website as a Post-retirement Fellow in the Computational Fluid Dynamics Group within that Division.

So far as I can judge (I’m not able to follow the detail), you have responded with civility to the issues that Dr. Stokes has raised. I’m left to wonder what is achieved by the name-calling in which some posters here have indulged.