Sigh. Another author publishing disinformation on climate with Connor Court (after Ian Plimer's "Heaven and Earth"), and based on this article, the book is shaping up to be similarly ill-informed.

Here's the first sign that this author doesn't actually know his way around the natural sciences:
"...it is certainly not accepted by the majority of scientists as proven fact, that global warming from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide..."
Word in your ear there, friend: nothing in the natural sciences is ever "proven fact". This is a "straw man" argument. What you're trying to say is "the balance of probabilities indicates". And the author is utterly incorrect, certainly for climate scientists (rather than the hand-waving term "scientists"): there's a very strong consensus that the current warming trend, if not addressed strongly, will probably have major impacts for human society.

Almost every paragraph in this article contains fundamental misunderstandings of climate science, statistics, the scientific method in general, and/or specific errors and misrepresentations. This kind of rubbish is best ignored.

Obviously climate science is inexact, based on probabilities and best-fit scenarios. Do we really need to be told this? The real question is not whether we can prove some future prospect (a logical impossibility), but whether there is good evidence and prediction (as provided by the best science available) which, in the eyes of a reasonable person, would warrant preventative action.

Much is claimed about the so-called scientific consensus, and it would be useful to have this vague notion made more specific.

For lay people like me, the best we can hope to do is apply a critical eye to the processes by which the evidence and conclusions are produced. It does not require political correctness or doomsday religion to conclude that there is enough evidence around to warrant some action. There will be some chance that such action, with the benefit of hindsight, will have been unnecessary, but that goes with the territory of being cautious.

Given the difficulties of making such judgments, waffle like this is not at all helpful.

For those who doubt global warming, compare the pictures of the Arctic, the Antarctic and Greenland from the 20th century and today. While the Northeast passage has been passable in historical time, the Northwest never been has until the 21th century. These are not theories, not birds nesting earlier and closer to the poles, not trees climbing mountains. Paltridge needs to get the new corporate playbook, which says that global warming is real, but people have nothing to do with it.

Matt,

I agree totally; seems you are "one eyed" if you support GW but a balanced and open individual if not!

I give up really. Had dinner the other night with a senior CEO of one of the largest international global companies who said "I am not a global warming skeptic! I simply don't believe that the world is warming at all". When I queried how he came to this breathtaking conclusion he replied "I have read a lot!".

No doubt the Financial Review or some other worthy expert commentator.

Why do so many hard scientists feel compelled to engage in pop sociology? My theory is they are releasing the contempt they have always secretly felt for colleagues in the arts and social science schools :).

In a desperate attempt to find something original to say that would give his post some point, Paltridge ends by considering 'how a belief in climatic doom became politically correct in the first place'. His answer is that 'the final outcome was inevitable from the start ... given the human addiction to tales of collective guilt'.

I know we social scientists might not have cool million dollar laboratories and stuff like that to use to gather data, but we do actually try to base theories on some kind of evidence. Can Paltridge perhaps cite some to support his bizarre belief that humans (excluding him, one presumes) are addicted to tales of collective guilt and consequently tend to accept misconceived beliefs as political correctness?

Or is he engaging in a wholly uninformed, evidence-free fantasy to bolster his preferred state of climate change denialism?

And this is supposed to be an informed comment by a scientist who perhaps knows his stuff. Yet this is hardly any science in the entire article.

But what is it? Essentially a stringing together of all the usual cliches by the so called skeptics. And like all of the skeptics he accuses those who advocate human caused global warming and climate change of being in the thrall of political correctness, and dependent of bottomless buckets of money for their existence (as advocates of their cause).

And his book is published by an outfit that specializes in promoting essentially right-wing opinions, masquerading as truth.

It never seems to occur to those on the right of the culture wars that they too are heavily biased in their opinions, and that they do not see "reality true", and that they too, promote wide-scale social engineering (while pretending not too).

And that those on the skeptics side (who shout very loudly) are financed by the deep buckets of money provided by the corporately funded right-wing stink tanks.

Speaking of corporate funded political correctness, propaganda, and all pervasive social engineering, why not check out this reference which describes how the process of brain-washing into seeing corporate created reality as reality true, begins (even in the cradle).

http://www.ouw.edu.au/arts/sts/sbeder/kiddy.html