pericles,

kenny and protagorus and sir vivor and q&a can respond if they wish. though i also disagree with the characterisation and relevance of plimer's motives, i think you've deliberately slanted and cherry-picked what they've written (and ignored what i've written). and you've said nothing of the nature and content (?) of the pro-plimer contributions here.

who has claimed anything like plimer, "by definition", is wrong or that plimer is "unqualified to share his views"?

frankly, pericles i'm astonished. i regard you as one of the most careful, thoughtful and clearheaded writers at OLO. here, you've taken an obtuse and snarky line (clotheless emperor? for god's sake). it ignores the nature of scientific debate, and it seems to deliberately confuse a person's right to present their views with the question of how much anyone should bother to listen to those views.

i have no idea what you expect an OLO debate on plimer's book to be. can you tell me the points plimer puts forward, and how you would have people address them here? do you care to look over the past OLO debates on AGW, and tell me the quality and the value of those debates?

Pericles

Plimer raised some 'points', they had issues and are addressed here:

http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/04/23/ian-plimer-heaven-and-earth/

I am not limited by word/post limits there.

You are right about one thing, although I would frame it a little differently ->

There are a lot of people out there who know diddly-squat about 'climate science' but are quite prepared to "belittle the source" ... not even attempting to read and understand the scientific literature or a published paper.

These same people even "belittle" the messenger, the IPCC, without ever having read the IPCC reports. They rely on the 'denialosphere' for their prime source of information - you know, 'denialist' blog sites and the shock-jocks in the popular press.

Clownfish is right, Al Gore is a "windbag preacher" who has captured the minds of a lot of people by his propagandist methods.

While Gore did focus the eyes of the world on climate change, he disenfranchised a lot of people just by the simple fact he was a Democrat. Ergo, people didn't like his political ideology so didn't like his concerns about global warming.

Plimer does make assertions in his book and uses many footnotes to back up them up. What I find very disconcerting is the fact that many of those cited refute Plimer's assertions yet he twists and distorts their refutations to add weight to his own opinions - that's not science, that's dishonesty.

Q&A, you are correct that there are those who rely solely on the "denialosphere"; I would assert that there are just as many who rely solely on the "alarmosphere".

As unimpressed as I am with those who claim that climate change is just not happening, I'm equally unimpressed with the fools who scurry about shrieking that the very existence of life on earth is in dire peril.

I think you're letting Al Gore off a little lightly: It's not the fact that he's a Democrat that irks me about him at all - if anything, that's my natural side of the political divide.

What I despise about Al Gore is his dishonesty and his towering hypocrisy. Ditto Sting, Prince Charles, Leo DiCaprio, Oprah Winfrey or any other climate alarmist poster idol who deigns to hector the masses from the comfort of their carbon-spewing private jets.

If they want to promote environmental issues, then please do it without hypocrisy, and most important of all, without lies or distortions: Polar bears are not drowning because of global warming, the Amazon is not "the lungs of the planet" nor is it disappearing, we are not going to lose 40% of species in the next century, and just because the IPCC includes worst cases in its range of scenarios, that doesn't mean that they're the unavoidable future either.

So Q&A are you Barry Brook or Ian Enting? You refer us to a website but there's a choice of AGW evangelists there.

I note both are government/university employees.

Does this matter when you sneer at someone else's work, or only when you produce your own?

extracted from
http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/14/magazines/fortune/globalwarming.fortune/index.htm#

..the surface temperature readings upon which global warming theory is built have been distorted by urbanization...Due to the solar heat captured by bricks and pavement and due to the changing wind patterns caused by large buildings,..Christy says.

The only way to control for such surface distortions is by measuring atmospheric temperatures...And when Christy and his co-researcher Roy Spencer,..analyzing temperature readings from NOAA and NASA satellites,..they found much slighter increases in atmospheric temperatures than what was being recorded on the surface.

Christy and Spencer also found that nearly all the increases in average surface temperatures are related to nighttime readings

..The daytime temperatures..show virtually no change over the past 100 years,..while the nighttime temperatures indicate the developed Valley has warmed significantly while the undeveloped Sierra foothills have not,"

Why did you help write the 2001 IPCC report and the 2003 AGU statement on climate change..if you disagreed with their fundamental conclusions?

We just said that human effects have a warming influence,and that's certainly true..There was nothing about disaster or catastrophe...It was about alarmist as you can get.

Generally people believe what they want to believe,so their minds will not change...However, as the issue is exposed in terms of economics and cost benefit..in my view, it's all cost and no benefit -
I think some of the people will take one step backward and say,..Let me investigate the science a little more closely.

In laymen's terms,..what's wrong with the surface temperature readings that are widely used to make the case for global warming?

First is the placement of the temperature stations...They're placed in convenient locations that might be in a parking lot or near a house and thus get extra heating from these human structures.

Over time, there's been the development of areas into farms or buildings or parking lots...Also, a number of these weather stations have become electronic,..and many of them were moved to a place where there is electricity,.which is usually right outside a building.

As a result,there's a natural warming tendency,..especially in the nighttime temperatures,..that has been misinterpreted as greenhouse warming.
see also
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfdwa4YED-k

Yes, OUG.

Or maybe such readings are just different kinds of "feedback loops"?