Cowboy

I do see a few snippets in newspapers (mainly on the web) but most of my reading on climate is from the papers published in the International Journal of Climatology. My membership of various associations gives me access to other scientific papers as well.

I would agree that scientists and/or scientific institutions need to communicate better with laypeople. At least the real decision makers are listening and taking action.

For what it’s worth, I cannot understand how any person of reasonable intelligence cannot invest some time reading at least the scientific abstracts of papers published about climate change.

These are some web sites I visit:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/

http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/old-temperature/

http://www.nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/

http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/ENSO/enso.references.html

(and many more so could become boring)

What really gets up my nose is when someone who is NOT skilled in what I have devoted my whole life to has the audacity to tell me I've got it all wrong. It’s like me telling you how to do your job.

I have to do research properly - yet these same people go on to tell me I have it all wrong – simply astounding.
__________________

Runner

Gore is a politician turned actor, Flannery (and Carter) are scientists turned actors – that doesn’t alter the science.

After reading all of the comments to my article I will add one thing. I write in terms of probability because nothing, absolutely nothing, is a certainty until it happens. All of science is probability based. If it ever becomes a certainty that is the end of the line. There is no progressing past knowing it all.
As I read the probabilities science is producing at the moment it seems that major events caused by global warming are very likely. Whether or not any or all of those likely events will produce a minor inconvenience or a total wipe-out is unknowable.
It would be nice to have the total certainty expressed by some of the commentators but I don't. I don't see total certainty about anything as a realistic position to take.
As for linking my article to the invasion of Iraq. Please do not make assumptions about my understanding of unrelated issues. Such forms of argument are fallacious, and as such meaningless.
David Young

Q&A "What really gets up my nose is when someone who is NOT skilled in what I have devoted my whole life to has the audacity to tell me I've got it all wrong. It’s like me telling you how to do your job."

Oh diddums - poor boy has to do dummy spit because he thinks he is being hard done by.

Welcome to reality.Every other profession on earth is subjected to same public scrutiny-why should climate scientists, and particularly those sucking on the public tit be immune.

If you are so concermned about your professional status in the eyes of everyone, why dont you:

1.Explain why Hansen is such a demonstrable crook.

2. Why the IPCC have to say 2500 scientits did the work on the various reports when it was probably no more than 40.I didnt hear you speaking up about that.

3. Why did the CSIRO undertake those appallingly exagerrated and certainly political studies for each of the state labour govts.Obviously because it was opportune to do so.

4. Why did Rann as the President of the Labour Party go out of his way to give Brooks $1m of state funds to set up a research centre for the further politicalisation of climate science.Timely wasnt it just prior to the last election.

5. Where were you when Gore put together his sham AIT, only to be caught out by a court of law, and public opinion. But not one of you tossers spoke up before hand,if you did I didnt see it.

6. Where were you when it was revealed that Gore has, and is still, making a booddle out of the AGW scare, using the AIT as his prospectus.

7.Why havnt you done something about the shonky state of peer review.Oh no thats OK, because we can manipulate it to our advantage and only get published was is consistent with the mantra. Just dont ask Spencer and Chrisie et al about that.

8.etc

Put the dummy away and grow up.

runner, diocletian, rpg and others,

As I said your views on climate change are settled and based on your own values and beliefs that take no account of scientific or any other evidence that cannot be shaped to suite your beliefs - trying logical argument or introducing scientific established facts and probabilities will not influence you and is a waste of my time.

But those who approach the whole question of climate change and other environmental challenges facing the world with an open mind but have not really paid much attention to the issues should not be allowed to be deliberately misinformed about these things by deniers such as yourselves. Hence by posts.

Tell me deniers (not that you will receive a response from me if you do) was/is the science behind the causes of the depletion of the ozone layer wrong? Were the actions eventually taken by world authorities (after a similar campaign of denial by DuPont and other vested interests) not warranted and should not Australians be thankful that actions have been taken to curb CFC emissions?

Tell me deniers, Have the Newfoundland and North Sea cod fisheries not collapsed due to overfishing? Are we not running out of oil? Are wells built to extract water not getting ever deeper, is productive land not continually being lost due to salination and erosion caused by over exploitation?

Tell me deniers, should the world continue to focus on continued economic growth and not address the issue of population growth? Is technology going to be the answer to all our problems caused by the fact that global resources and sinks to absorb our waste are limited?
If you believe technology will be the answer how do you justify this believe - where is the science, the logic?

Do you really care what the future holds for the next generation or so? (I don't care if you don't care but I do if you continue to ignore the evidence.)

Q&A, your BBQ sounded pleasant. Hope the weather was nice. Isn't life wonderful when you're free.

Alas, human psychology is more complex than the climate. There is much in your post I could address, but it should suffice to say that I initially believed "global warming" WAS happening, so your theory of denial collapses at Stage 1. Suggest you consider revising, but you show little propensity for such things. Suggest reflect on possibility of own denial, a concept that a good psychologist knows how easily can be abused, and I am glad you are not one given the way you use the term around here. People can hold onto perceptions, theories and worldviews so deeply, fuse them to their identity, that it is threatening to their ego to even consider there may be others, or worse, that they may even be wrong. Tragically, some will inflict great suffering on themselves and others before they will ever let go and see anything but their fearfully held "truth". (Homework - name three people/institutions in history that have committed atrocities in the name of their own "truth".) A journalist in The Age last week called for sabotage and civil disobedience in the name of saving a planet in peril. I wonder how far such things might go? As I heard Peter Roebuck on the cricket say yesterday, quoting Keynes, "be careful the cure isn't worse than the illness" - something good economists, doctors and psychologists understand well.

Re seniors moments, another characteristically weak defence. As I have endeavoured to explain before, the issue is not whether the individual in question had such moments, or whether you do TOO (I've had them since infancy), but that you will not state what you believe they were. Are you the type of guy who gets his kicks telling grandma she keeps forgetting to let the cat in when it died 10 years earlier? But you persist and resist with something like denial.

kulu - nice of you to tell me my views are settled, and you're wrong - if someone can provide factual evidence, proof in other words that increasing CO2 is directly and proportionally linked to world temperature rise, I'm happy to change my mind - as most do when facts are presented. I will not be intimidated by models and man made scenarios and hysterical gossip.

I'm not interested in your other rantings about other scares, you obviously feel you have to expand beyond climate now since your case is so weak. none of those rants has anything to do with climate as put forward in this article.

Bottom line is none of the climate models predicted a lowering of temperature in 2008 did they? They all predicted a rise in temperature. Hence, the "science" is not settled, and if you rely on that "science", you're wrong (logic)!

I'm an engineer, and a good one, so don't give me rubbish about not believing facts, my life is facts and mathematics - not social bullying or name calling (deniers is clearly meant by you to be inflammatory, yet more bullying).

Your whole argument is anti-technology, it isn't just climate by your own admission, now that you've lost the plot you're onto all the other aspects of modern life you don't like, fishing, ozone, global resources - climate is just the focus of your rant on this thread.