Okaaay fungo. Thanks for letting me know I wuz right about the shallow goose bit ( :>/

It begs the question: why on earth are you on a forum like this if you are not willing corroborate your opinions even one iota? Very odd indeed

Q & A,

I'm happy to agree that I'm a senior, but at this point I don't know about the senior moments that you tell me I've had lately. Maybe I have a problem - can you please let me know what senior moments you have in mind?

The authors of this unscientific article claim that sceptics are being ostracised whilst subtly criticising believers.

And Australia’s most senior clergy, Cardinal Pell, in replying to criticism from the Anglican Bishop of Canberra and Goulburn George Browning last year, accused 'radical environmentalists' of 'moralising their own agenda and imposing it on people through fear'.

Yet the Archbishop of Canterbury believes that humans must change to prevent further anthropogenic destruction of the planet:

“The menace of radical climate change with which we began is only one instance; but the effects of irresponsible alteration of the ecology of life-forms in specific habitats (cane-toads in Australia for example) show the same reality.

"There is a point beyond which the system cannot continue to operate 'normally'.

“And the transfer, for economic reasons, of plant and animal species from one environment to another has had a regularly devastating effect on the overall ecology of a new environment and its balance.

“Economics can manage for only so long as a science that ignores the limits of material resource."

Last year, Lavoisier and IPA notables descended on Parliament House in Canberra to attend a launch of Ray Evans book, “Nine facts about climate change.”

Guests included mining barons Hugh Morgan and Arvi Parbo and founding member of the Lavoisier Group, Peter Walsh, a gentleman who the authors here “draw inspiration from one of the Hawke government’s greatest figures.”

Evans ungraciously told The Age that Gore’s film was “bull@*t from beginning to end.” Really Ray?

Arvi Parbo declared at the launch "One must admire the skilful way in which the public has been led to believe that there is no longer any uncertainty, and that disastrous climate change caused by humans is imminent," "Imminent", Arvi?

He then proceeded to tip a bucket on the IPCC, Al Gore, Tim Flannery and Bob Brown.

So authors, whilst there is not yet scientific consensus on all the reasons for climate change, I must ask: “why do you see the splinter in the eye of the believer but fail to see the plank in the eye of the sceptic?”

Thanks guys. Your insults and condescension of others here shows inspiring depth.
Q&A, perhaps the struggle you see in economics and politics is because it is more complex and challenging than playing with Nintendo Climate games and involves the real world of decisions and accountability, and weighing perspectives and values other than yours. I know, you're the good and pure scientists in a lab who just pass on the dire messages. Don't harm us. Those others are bad men with actual potency in the world.

Warning ... straying off topic.

Ian, all banter aside.

You admit to not being a ‘climate scientist’. Nevertheless, you are a statistician (with a bent for economics). Three questions if I may.

1. Do you think Supreme Court Judge Mackenzie erred in his assessment of Bob Carter’s assertion that global warming stopped in 1998?

2. With your other hat on, how do you see Copenhagen playing out next year, now that the US is likely to be more liberal in its stance on climate change while at the same time the world’s economic situation is cascading out of control?

3. Do you think there is too much of a divide between political science/economics and ‘climate science’ that never the twain shall meet?

Thanks in advance for some qualified answers.

Others, please join in.

Q&A, catastrophic climate change may not occur any time soon but what we do now will contribute to how soon and how catastrophic. A straight reading of the IPCC's most recent report says there's plenty to be alarmed about and it's not irrational to take it seriously - more like irrational to fail to.

IanC, I find the authors’ abuse of the terms scepticism and orthodoxy far more interesting and revealing than their complaints about others abusing the term "sceptic". Anyway I thought the point of the article was to imply getting serious about climate change is an irrational Green agenda, (it isn’t), to falsely name science based understanding of climate as orthodoxy (it's not), to suggest that there is significant scientific doubt (there isn't), that gets unheeded for failing to conform (it doesn't) rather than because of a lack of scientific merit.

Meanwhile, unspoken and unchallenged, is the real orthodoxy; that what people do won't change the climate. Applying the same "scepticism" to that belief tells me a climate change sceptic's "I don't know" just isn't good enough to decide anything - to decide to act or decide not to.