michael_in_adelaide: http://www.energybulletin.net/50905 , http://rutledge.caltech.edu/

Two excellent sources of information. Thanks.

Graham Young's warning is not at all timely - it is months late, and he seems to have a pretty loose definition of flaming. About fifty percent of today's posts on this article are insulting and should, in the interests of fairness, be removed or edited. The same applies to other articles I have read during the last year. Although some posters valiantly engage in reasonable and civil debate, there are far too many who seem to think that abuse equals argument. I seldom read OLO these days because of them. So please, Graham, come down hard on all flamers. Perhaps an anti-flaming warning where we click on to comments would help too.

candide, I kind of agree with you, but then what does Graham do when some articles are clearly in your face insulting people?

You have to expect some robust feedback.

Take Andrew Glikson's recent article with its description "A denial campaign waged by contrarians supported by fossil fuel interests is holding the world to ransom.", so he's flamed a portion of the population, much like our dear PM Rudd.

He's called people "denialists", a deliberate insult, called them "contrarians", another insult, and accused them of being funded by polluters to commit a "criminal act", does it get any worse in this day of emotional eco blackmail?

Should we just turn the other cheek, or challenge that sort of narrow minded emotion and lack of objectivity?

It's easy to know what posts to delete until you have to actually do it. It's frequently reasonable to question someone or their motives, so a blanket ban on talking about authors or other commenters would be absurd. But then, once you accept this, am I being abusive if I refer to the "soft racism" of an article, or is that fair comment? And if fair comment, where is the line drawn?

Then there are issues of context. I left the Geoff Davies reference to Alf Garnett, that Col takes exception to, because without his post the rest of the thread doesn't make a lot of sense, at least at the beginning, but I took others out in the same vein afterwards because the cumulative effect was abusive and by that stage people had been warned.

One of the commenters who had a post deleted is intending to start a general thread about flaming (and presumably moderation) and, assuming it doesn't breach any rules, I will be approving it. Suggest we continue debate about flaming etc. there as it is really off-topic here.

Graham

Amicus, I think its gone beyond turning the other cheek - insulting other posters, individually or collectively, now seems to be the norm. Col Rouge, for example, ended his 'sanitised' post with
'I wonder what barmy bulltish the "left" will hang their hat on next?'

Everyone is entitled to their viewpoint, broad or narrow, but I think OLO should, belatedly, put its foot down in relation to downright rudeness in the Forum.

The European/US freeze is so so funny. The manipulating, excuses and squirming has reached new heights. After a prediction of a warm winter in England we now have this. Don't forget however that the 'science' is settled. Yea about as settled as the 'science' that evolutionist keep updating. We get one or two hot temperatures in the middle of summer and our PM and others try and use it to win a hopelessly flawed arguement. Maybe the global coolers of the 70's were right. The 'science' was settled' then.