Thank you daviy. Good luck to you. May I suggest non-fear based openmindedness as substitute for cognitive dissonance.

See that non-elected Greenpeace set to defy democratically elected government. ABC happy to publicise. Full support of Prof David Karoly - "academic".

Deft call there, fungo! A very useful point in mentioning that the "fear" factor rears its ugly, irrational head again with the AGW mania. Trying to justify cognitive dissonance is about as bizarre as justifying phobia (whether "Islamo-" or other).

While we have such a conciliatory mood, I should add that environmentalism itself has brought us so much that's good and necessary. Whether researching and countering the effects of toxic spills, unreplaced deforestation, sea and river chlorination, land salination, lead oxide and CO pollution, etc., environmentalist activism has deserved much credibility - and private and public sector funding.

But Ozandy's own position here too rather seems to err on a startling, conspicuous case of cognitive dissonance. Ozandy, you say: "the common enemy is untruth", but you claim with unambiguous confidence: "GW *is* happening, and is due in part to human CO2". For starters, there is a massive problem accepting that non-scientists claim *scientific* authority on AGW. That is already an obvious corruption of an important process, whether such non-scientists are finance sector apparatchiks like World Bank's Stern/Garnaut, or party hacks like Wong/Garrett, or bits of both like Goldman/Lib swindler Turnbull. When authorities of such influence start calling the tune - like on "Iraq WMD" - we can very reasonably expect an increasingly corrupted sector of scientific research (like in state intelligence after the efforts of Blair et al).

That is why this purported environmentalist issue - AGW - arouses such impassioned opposition and criticism like my own. Valid environmentalist causes naturally arouse our sympathy and concern. But when enough scientific and political dissident opinion can alert us to an apparent hijacking of environmentalism by a cynical, misanthropic hoax, then we should all start to pay serious attention to the actual substance of both the scientific and political debates before us.

Cognitive dissonance, by contrast, will get us all overwhelmed and left for dead by the ambitious, cynical opportunists.

"There are some "back of the envelope" models of what happens with increases in CO2...Or slightly more complex ones.... Neither requires a computer, just a pencil and a sheet of paper, plus some advanced maths. While both predict temperature rises, there is nothing too scary about them.

To get the scary temperature rises requires GCM (general circulation models) which run on computers and are programmed with positive feedbacks."

But hang on. I think you're seriously misrepresenting things here. Both back of the envelope and GCMs actually give the same answer (about 3C rise for a doubling of CO2). What the GCMs do is estimate how this temp rise might be distributed, and the implications for precipitation patterns, ecosystems etc. This is where the scary bits pop out.

And if by 'historical' you mean the geological record, there are plenty of geoscientists (eg Andrew Glikson) who say far from 'nothing happening at the moment that can't be accommodated', rather the record indicates the potential for much worse than the GCMs predict.

Hi fungochumley
Nice to see you are still around. Your've been so quiet I thought you must have given up and gone home.

Spot on, fungochumley, as usual.

Col Rouge,

Good for you. But there was a sequel and it is perhaps more apt to Grahams musings.

That evening in our midst was a quiet and rather intense Med Student. She belately added to the joke.

She pointed out the farmer was a Business Grad who had made millions on stock market speculations. He also was an avid animal protectionist. Any way apparently he'd bought his chickens at a local produce auction to save them from a fate at the Colonels.

As soon as he'd received the physicist's report he rang the local RSPCA for advise as to whether making chickens spherical and putting them in a vaccuum would cause pain. They recommended a vet. The vet turned up inspected the chickens and asked the farmer why he wanted spherial chickens and why he wanted them kept in a vaccuum.

He told of the physicist's report.

Her perplexed look turned to one of contrived horror, to hide her laughter, as she asked what sort of brainless idiot would ever think cockerels could be made to lay eggs?