next, you are a dunce but others have already hosed you down, so I won't bother further.

For the more competent commenters, you may enjoy the following linked article as a diversion from dear old Andy's obsessive attempts to defend the indefensible:
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/things_scientists_say/

RPG, in asking for evidence of AGW, you're implicitly rejecting a large body of science. The IPCC was a consensus view of scientists from around the world based on the peer reviewed literature. Denialists frequently reject the IPCC (despite its inherent conservatism). In doing so, you're rejecting their findings and their methods. So, I ask again, if you reject evidence of AGW such as that (and I'm afraid there's mountains of such evidence that is considered valid under current scientific methods), then tell me what evidence you would require and what you would require in the method of producing that evidence to convince you? My view is that denialists such as you will never be satisfied, will never believe the evidence and will never propose an alternative way of deriving the evidence that is remotely as rigorous as what we have now.

next - yes, correct I'm rejecting the consensus, it's not science, OK. A consensus is a political vehicle, not a scientific one.

The IPCC output is an averaged view extracted by a few people, to create a bite sized report for governments and laymen, the IPCC report is not science, it is a report on science.

It is obviously acceptable to you, but not to me or other skeptics, I'm an engineer and deal with facts not group think or peer pressure to believe something.

The central tenet to the skeptics view is exactly as I have described, and as others constantly do, if you don't understand it, it's not my problem.

You're spending too much time on the believeosphere with their circular and tricky arguments to accept the view of the majority as science, it is not. Do some thinking for yourself as you clearly do not understand which is why you're taking up residence in such sites.

Your post makes little sense, you asked me for a reason, I gave it to you and now you say it's not the reason, or the reason isn't good enough. That's the basis of my skepticism, get some facts and I'll be convinced.

I'll not be bullied though by a consensus, name calling, references to authority, gobbledegook or supposed conspiracy accusations.

Get the facts, get EVIDENCE, not models, not coincidences, not vague statements like "the probability is 90%" (Patchauri, a railway engineer) it might not be 90% as well.

"The proposition that doubling CO2 levels will lead to substantial (ie 3-5 Deg C) warming is not proven. Most would accept around 1 deg C (ignoring for the moment the logarithmic decay effect), but higher levels depend on unproven assumptions re positive feedback effects."

I would have thought that the obvious real example was that of Venus, which absorbs less solar radiation than Earth, yet has a uniform surface temperature of 450 Celsius. To put the comment into context, Earth's atmosphere would have as much CO2 as Venus with 18 doublings, whereas by the above reasoning we might only suspect a warming of about 18 Celsius with such an increase. So to refer to warming greater that 1 Celsius per CO2 doubling is clearly nonsense. And even if you didnt want to think about Venus (believe me, most sceptics dont), there is also the paeleological evidence, which would tend to suggest a warming of 2 to 3 Celsius for a doubling of CO2.

One question I have for the sceptics is what harm can come from the development of CO2 reducing technology such as recycling of organic waste into nutrients and biofuels, cheaper solar cells, safer and more efficient nuclear power, and better batteries?

Odo, the trick to denialism is staying right on the borderline of credibility so that lazy people won't question your statements. By claiming “skeptics are not being organised and funded to be skeptical”, you crossed the borderline and ran naked into the land of absurdity.

Fair suck of the sav, though. You cite for me five scientifically qualified “sceptics” that you think aren’t funded by or aligned with polluting industries, and I reckon I can demonstrate that they are.

Atman, if my questions are reasonable, why did the "sceptics" only attempt to answer one of them? Let's see how you went.

I didn’t read the first article. If that seems unfair, I promise I will if the other “sceptics” in this thread vouch for its credibility.

Atman's source is people who believe that the British Royal Family are drug runners who secretly control the world. No joke. That’s what they believe. Read all about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Views_of_Lyndon_LaRouche_and_the_LaRouche_movement

Will Atman’s fellow "sceptics" back him up? Do you consider the LaRouchians a reliable source of information? If so, I’ll give him a serious response.

Then we have seeker401. Oh, my…

Did you read about the “on-going set of face-to-face meetings between U.S. military officials and extraterrestrial life”? Apparently, “the contact involves extraterrestrial groups known as Reptilians, and a silicon based life form dubbed ‘the Conformers’… {and} Ebens from the Zeta Reticuli star system, but known colloquially as the Grays.”

So, Atman’s source on this one asserts that the moon landing was faked, military officials regularly meet with extraterrestrials, George Bush engineered 9/11, and Freemasons are hiding Jesus' tomb.

Who needs peer review with this guy around?

Next up, an interesting article about a man who claims, without any supporting evidence, to have influence on the UN’s climate change policy.

Third link is meaningless. Please direct us to evidence of wrongdoing, not a simple insinuation that informal conversations equal global conspiracy.

Next…unsubstantiated statements about share portfolios and an appeal to the authority of – get this – Lord Christopher “people with HIV should be imprisoned” Monckton, and our very own Senator Steve Fielding.

>>>

<<<

You know an international news organisation is on the ball when it rests a case on an unknown Senator from Australia whose voters are outnumbered by Jedi.

None of those links questions the qualifications of IPCC scientists. Maybe you’re thinking of the anti-AGW petitions which are full of dead people, homeopaths, masseurs and scientists who never signed.

Similarly, none of the links explains how the IPCC scientists benefit from a hoax. AGW isn't an issue because a handful of rich people say it is, but because it's backed by solid data.

Any research scientist could double their income by working on the industry Astroturf, and imagine the coup! It would be front page news. Any purely self-interested researcher would have jumped ship ages ago to get those yummy petro-dollars. Can you give any explanation why supposedly mercenary scientists haven't done that?

Interesting that none of the "sceptics" have had a go at my other two questions. I'll try again:

B) Where is the fraud in the CRU emails? Where is the tampering with results?

C) Where have the "sceptics" been for the last fifty years? Where was the mass movement against climate science before it became political? What other scientific discoveries have OLO's inactivists railed against?

After lives spent accepting and defending the scientific process, enjoying the benefits of research and discovery, never questioning the peer-review process or the quality of data, these people want to be regarded as shrewd, evidence-based critics because the industry lobby has built a Right-wing bandwagon to jump on. Entirely unconvincing.

I'd particularly like rpg to try. Having claimed to be an engineer who deals "with facts not group think or peer pressure to believe something", please tell us what else you've been sceptical about, and link us to some of your criticisms of the scientific process outside climate science.

BTW, I particularly liked the claim of engineering qualifications as a basis for authority, followed by a dismissal of Patchauri because he's merely an engineer.