Amicus, you say "That's the nice thing about anonymous posting, your rants and attempts to bully, just fall flat." I'm not posting anonymously, you are. I'm not afraid of expressing my opinions and attaching my name to them.

Emotive?

This is a factual analysis of the situation I find the world in today. If you think it's wrong, post evidence to the contrary. I read the scientific literature and I find scant evidence to oppose the view that anthropogenic climate change is not real and a significant threat. Cite some papers and let's see if they are any good.

Here's an interesting analysis of the interpersonal networks behind anti-science campaigns, by John Mashey: http://www.desmogblog.com/another-silly-climate-petition-exposed

The "sceptic" view is increasingly bolstered by hysterical attacks such as the alleged conspiracy exposed in over a thousand stolen emails, in which nothing of substance is revealed. Yet we see a feeding frenzy around the Internet claiming the contrary. An email cache this big couldn't have been faked. What do we find in it? 3 or 4 conversations using intemperate language that the authors wouldn't have used in public. No conspiracy to cook the major data sets, no conspiracy to ensure that the thousands of papers published on the subject all line up neatly, no conspiracy to con the public into a false sense of panic about the science. No conspiracy to set up world government. The one data set on which a lot of attention has been focused is in fact when you dig into the detail the 1998 Mann tree ring reconstruction, aka hockey stick. So this isn't even a new issue, it's another attack on a data set that has been successfully defended in the scientific arena (though the emotive right claim the contrary, and Prof Mann is being exposed to yet another Inquisition-style enquiry), which is but one of many lines of evidence. This is being dishonestly spun as indicating the modern instrument data has been cooked, a data set that is totally unrelated to tree ring reconstructions.

And you accuse me of being "emotive".

Old men heh. Well isnt that interesting when it is the old retired scientists, who now having the freedom, are coming out and telling it like it is without fear of recriminations etc.

And isnt it a revealing, as well as refreshing.

People like Garth Paltridge, William Kinninmonth, Art Raiche, Walter Starck all highly credentialed and credible as leaders as well as researchers.

These people are heroes adn we need more of them

PhilipM, yes - you are clearly emotional. OK, let's go through it, shall we.

I'm posting anonymously, you're publishing an Opinion Article and thus have to identify yourself.

I post anonymously for several reasons, one of the reasons is to avoid emotional article writers who get upset when there is disagreement. For all I know, you might be the deranged type and why should I be fearful of posting? Surely you write articles to encourage a range of ideas? Otherwise you'd pick a different forum. Or was this meant as a rant where you brook no comment, only agreement?

It's not a factual analysis, it's your opinion - that's all.

Posting references, I'm not going to enter a URL war, what's the point, you're an AGW Believer (cultist), and thus are not skeptical, and disrespect skeptics - you even state there is no reason to go over the whistle blower emails from CRU, if you were objective, you wouldn't term them as "stolen", that's not proved is it?

Whether the data is stolen or was released to the wild by an insider, it's interesting to see the processes - if you think there's nothing in the data, why worry? There's obviously no fuss, since there is nothing there, according to your logic, so what's going on Phil?

"The "sceptic" view is increasingly bolstered by hysterical attacks", right and did you read your own post before you put it up, it's a hysterical attack on me, (does that mean you're a skeptic now?)

Thanks, you rest my case for me, you're emotional and I'm not going to bother with you. Your title says it all, When Old Men kill their Children, that's an appeal to emotion, yes?

Have a cup of tea and maybe a good lie down, you might feel better, leave off the attacks on anyone who disagrees as you'll just end up angry and .. oh. I'm making fun of you, because you are so true to form the hysterical AGW believer, frothing at the mouth at anyone disagreeing.

"...people who cling to the notion that any change is bad."

Gee that's a bit rich. It's the global government brigade who cling to the notion that any change is bad - that's the entire premise of the whole nutty climate change belief system.

This is a just a rant from an extremely rude person who thinks that people are useless and unnecessary after they reach a certain age.

I got a giggle out of his “…let's be polite…”, after he had compared us with Mugabe and “the old men in charge…:” during WW1.

Philip Machanick clearly does not do ‘polite’. I don’t think anyone else has ever contributed such impolite ignorance to OLO. (I’m not including posters).

Most of us, however, have had much more experience than he has, and will just put it down to his inexperience of life and the real world. All the childish climate hysterics resort to abuse in the end.

Machanick seems to have been spurred on by the disgraceful and stupid DVD of the little girl fleeing floods and cracking earth put on by the young, beautiful and always right people at the Copenhagen Conference

Interesting. So many people arguing that being rude, personal and emotive is terrible. Guys, go read the literature by the denial camp. it is full of emotive terminology, accusing climate scientists of starting a religion, committing fraud etc. I seldom write in this style as you can see from my blog http://opinion-nation.blogspot.com/ but I am amused that people from a camp that has a long history of personal abuse suddenly claims the moral high ground when they have their tactic thrown back at them. I count the experiment a success.

On the view that older scientists are freer to speak out: a valid hypothesis, and easy to test. Find another discipline where a comparable number of older scientists is signing petitions, writing angry opinion pieces and popular books attacking the mainstream, writing angrily to the media and using the language of personal attack you find in this field. Let's see your results.

Here are a few standards against which to compare. I searched on a couple of well known authors, and found these words:

"Scientific legerdemain", "IPCC delivers even more preposterous advice in ever shriller tones", "alarmist" (many times), "IPCC has never been strong on empirical science", "warming alarmists", "hysterical global warming scare", "no critical due diligence of the science", "17th Century thinking promotes prophets of doom, guilt and penance", "Global warming has become the secular religion of today" ... and this is a small sampling. I've seen other articles accusing scientists of fraud, and all manner of other forms of dishonesty. People on their side of the debate are "rational". No doubt using heavily emotive language and personal insults is "rational" if you are on the right side of an issue.

None of this is arguing the science. If it was, there'd be no problem. I'm happy to argue the science with anyone, and would be really ecstatic if there were a convincing alternative theory that explained the climate without subjecting us to the risks associated with rising CO_2 because I see very little probability that we will turn emissions around in time to avoid serious effects.