Joe,

What you're saying makes a lot of sense. Education is the key. However I was talking globally. Rationality dictates that the planet has a finite amount of resources and that it can tolerate only a limited amount of pollution. Therefore if world population continues to grow rapidly, if industrialisation spreads around the world, and if pollution and resource depletion continues at an increasing rate - we do need to ask, as I stated previously - where is human society headed - we can't just be content to sit by and do nothing - we do need to look to our future and those of future generations - education is indeed the key

Bugsy,

I think your last post highlights the problem; you don’t understand where things fit. You have moved all the elements around into other topics in your response. I think this has simply compounded your confusion.

The reason for pointing out the roles and responsibilities of the UN, is simply to demonstrate that anyone supporting this view does so with the full understanding that this is a flawed structure, it is a “closed” entity and we all need to understand that flawed/closed governance produces flawed/closed outcomes. It is also a key source of skepticism.

So let’s put things back in their correct boxes.

1. Governance means just that. Individual national policies do not belong here. The IPCC is not in governance and belongs in 3.. Scientific consensus belongs in 3.. The UN remains the single governance on AGW, unless you can name another my point remains valid.
2. “In science the orthodoxy is the mainstream”. True Bugsy, it should be. The problem here is that it is only the UN’s orthodoxy that is viewed as mainstream because we have no other choice. Now tell us what other orthodoxy the UN promotes besides AGW?
3. You didn’t respond to any issues at all here on the single streaming science from the IPCC, but you did say your views were “mainstream”. No Bugsy, they are not. They are the UN’s single orthodoxy, governed by absolute UN governance and supported by single stream science from the IPCC.

Buy into it by all means, defend it as hard as you like, provide as much “science” as you like and produce as much supporting advocacy opinion as you like. But you cannot change the very basis for your views.

To your point that, “this was not controversial more than a decade ago”. Nonsense, contrary science had it nailed years ago, you chose not to listen.. What happened was “Climategate” and a cricket score of own goals from the CRU and IPCC.

The last point remains unanswered, if UN/CRU stuff ups caused the current problems, why blame skeptics?

Bugsy,

You have questioned my sincerity, you don’t need to, I promised to treat you with respect and I am keeping that commitment. I didn’t accuse you or anyone else of being a cult member, please re-read same. I suspect that many on OLO who may or may not agree with your views, will quietly if not publicly be saying, ‘Onya Bugsy.

Back to the UN. I know many people who support AGW, yet in discussions there is often acknowledged serious doubt about how the UN has gone about things and the claims they have made.

When asked why that doubt about the UN does not translate into the same level of doubt about AGW, the answer is always the same. “Well, there are so many governments, with so much legislation and so many public, scientific, political, academic and media advocates all over the world, surely it is inconceivable they could be wrong?”

“There is no opinion, however absurd, which men will not readily embrace as soon as they can be brought to the conviction that is generally adopted.”

(Stephen Schopenhauer)

The core of AGW has little to do with science; I doubt it was initially politically inspired and there is no evidence it was engineered in any way. We are left with “the conviction that is generally adopted”.

It takes very little effort to see that it has evolved, morphed and more recently, been steered by opportunism. It is self evident that none of the key advocates are in control. “It” controls “them”. The only evidence of organized activity is from commercial/industrial opportunism and they are making lots of “dosh” at our expense.

The rear guard action to prevent a collapse of this phenomenon is coming, curiously enough, from public advocacy with absolutely no scientific skills, just lots of information.

Now that is worth pondering

"Now that is worth pondering"

Actually, it isn't. It's just a narrative that is made up and put on the internet. As is all of your polemic.

Re that quote,

“There is no opinion, however absurd, which men will not readily embrace as soon as they can be brought to the conviction that [it] is generally adopted.”

Arthur Schopenhauer. A bit of pedantics never hurt anybody :)

Two more quotes - from Arthur Schopenhauer -

"Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world."

And -

"All truth passes through 3 stages - First, it is ridiculed. Second it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."