Peter Hume,

Sorry about the delay in reply, but aside from being busy, I have spent a lot of time considering how I should word a response in such a way that would prevent a knee jerk “Rubbish!” or “Fraud!” reaction from you, but after careful consideration, I’ve come to the conclusion that that’s probably not possible, so here goes nothing.

Your first paragraph is close enough. But I didn’t go into how I reached my conclusion several reasons. Firstly, because we have word and post limits and if I were to try to recall the entire journey, I would need to spend the next few days maxing-out my post limits for this thread, only to have any reference I linked to accused of bias and secondly, because that could create a toing and froing lasting for weeks that I really don’t have the motivation to get involved in at the moment.

<<Then when it's pointed out that the standard technique of the warmists is to assume what's in issue, and go from there…>>

While it would be fair to say there’s a certain level of assumption in your everyday unqualified armchair “warmist”, I don’t think the technique you mention would have been the case for scientists when it was first hypothesised that our emissions would one day be a problem, decades ago. That would be a pretty big breach of the scientific method.

But it’s hard to tell if you’re including relevantly qualified scientists when you refer to “warmists”, or just the armchair variety.

<<But that was your argument.>>

I wasn’t trying to present arguments so much as I was sharing my experience. Although I’ll admit I was goading for a response along the lines of, “No serious sceptic uses those arguments”, on the side. Instead I got emotional responses similar to what Christians often give after being presented with some basic logic showing why their god is highly improbable, if not impossible.

<<You didn't give any reason why … [if AWG is real] you believe that policy is capable of making the problem better than worse.>>

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I don’t necessarily think I can, especially with a rapidly growing and unsustainable population. But surely nuclear power would be a big step in the right direction where emissions are concerned.

<<Then you ask me for credible rebuttals. This is to reverse the onus of proof, thus confirming the suspicion of a back-to-front intellectual approach.>>

I already acknowledged the whole onus of proof bit, but you’ve taken a passing request of mine and blown it out to make it appear as though that’s the way I approached the entire issue when my request was not necessarily indicative of that at all - particularly since I had already listed a few debunked claims that, surely, one would feel compelled to clear-up or bury with some credible rebuttals.

<<Can you give credible reason and evidence that we face catastrophic AGW that policy can improve?>>

Whoa, whoa! Catastrophic? I haven’t gotten that far. I am yet to decide for myself whether or not I think it looks like it will be catastrophic and I’m not sure I ever will form a strong opinion there. There are so many factors to consider.

It’s as though you’re trying drag me a little further into a more alarmist realm to make what I say easier to attack.

I was intrigued as to why you keep mentioning policy too, particularly here when it wasn’t necessary to your question, then I read the rest of your paragraph…

<<It's got to be catastrophic, because that's what it's been sold as, not merely moderate. And you've got to be able to say what reason there is to think policy can improve the situation, and how the relevant values are identified and worked out.>>

This question reminds me of a debate a once saw between a creationist and an atheist, where the creationist asked the atheist how they thought the universe came about, then quickly added, “But you can’t say you don’t know”, to which the atheist then replied with exactly the same question I’ll ask you now…

Why?

Is this just an attempt at bait-and-switch?

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Or would you accept the science if nobody was saying it was going to be catastrophic? That would be some pretty fallacious reasoning if it were the case. Even worse than the “back-to-front intellectual approach” you mentioned.

Has my pointing-out of the repetitively debunked arguments without the hysteria and the hasty solutions made you uncomfortable?

Do you think it makes it okay to repeat debunked arguments, or that the score is somehow evened, if some of those with opposing views become hysterical about AGW and presume to know what the entire world should do about the problem?

<<I don't think you can, but please go ahead and let's see what you've got.>>

I don’t think I can either. Certainly not in a few hundred words and I think you’re well aware of that.

This sounds similar to the creationist tactic of putting impossible expectations on one’s opponent, such as requesting an example of a monkey giving birth to a human.

The ‘onus of proof’ is one thing, but to expect someone to repeat (even just an adequate portion of) hundreds of peer reviewed papers on an online forum is not only ‘cheeky’ (to say the very least), but lazy considering you’re capable of investigating it in your own spare time.

Instead, you request what you know is not possible in order to create the illusion that those who have the burden of proof aren’t able to provide it and thus relieving yourself of any need to think about what the credible rebuttals may actually be.

Now sure, I could simply “point” you to some information (as was all I requested of you), but as I said earlier, I suspect that even if I was to do that, you’d probably just claim that the figures were fudged without checking the sources to see if they actually were or not and let’s face it, it’s not like you haven’t been debating this on OLO long enough to already know where you can go to get it.

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I suspect, at this point, you’d be tempted to say, “Well, I don’t find any of that evidence compelling”, to which I would then respond, “Why?”

So you see, it’s not just a simple case of burden-of-proof-switching, particularly when it’s unclear as to whether or not you want me to inform you of some existing peer reviewed material that you’re not yet aware of, or if you are under the impression that you already know it all and want me to come up with something that scientists are yet to come up with, because if it’s the latter, then the burden of proof can switch.

<<I don't think it's any coincidence that this belief system - with so many uncanny similarities to traditional Christian chiliasm - arose in the West so soon after the widespread decline of traditional Christianity.>>

Neither acceptance nor denial of AGW are religions or belief systems - although I do see striking similarities between “scepticism” and creationism - this is simply emotive language that does nothing for your cause. (I suggest you look-up the definitions of ‘religion’ and ‘belief system’ too: http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=define%3Areligion&btnG=Search&meta=, http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=define%3Abelief+system&btnG=Search&meta=). Emotive language like “warmertariat”, “end is nigh” and “co-religionists” (And that’s just in the last few posts!) from “sceptics” don’t help their cause either.

I guess, at the of the day, I’m just not conspiracy-minded enough to believe that hundreds of scientists are dishonest enough and willing to ditch all that they stood for while studying, to work every day with the intention of seeing how they can further fudge the figures for a political agenda and to feather their nests. People in general are not that bad.

Surely someone - anyone - would have either let the secret slip or blown the whistle after all these years. Believe it nor not, there people out there who actually value honesty enough to let the truth out regardless of what the rewards would otherwise be and to suggest that not one of the scientists who actively publishes material on climate change is good enough to do that sounds incomprehensibly improbable.

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I’m sorry, Peter, but the more I read the comments of OLO’s “sceptics” now, the more they start to look like this guy… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF8UzWclbkA&feature=player_detailpage#t=117s.

P.S. I apologise for the sheer length of my reply, but I’ve tried cover all my bases as I am not enthusiastic about a drawn-out debate after inadvertently de-railing the thread to begin with.

AJ
I don’t know how else to compendiously refer to those who believe we face a grave problem of man-made global warming justifying policy action, other than as warmists, but if you prefer some other term, let me know and I’ll use that.

You have only confirmed once again that, when we ask a warmist to give a cogent summary of his concerns without indulging circular and personal argument, it turns out that he has got NOTHING BUT circular and personal argument.

You started out arguing that that skeptics are intellectually indistinguishable from deniers - i.e. they ‘automatically and instinctively reject’ the alleged “science” of AWG; their intellectual method is similar to creationists i.e. irrational.

(The difference between creationists and skeptics is of course that the evolutionists can demonstrate their case to a very high standard; whereas you haven’t made a case to answer – appeal to absent authority doesn’t cut it I’m afraid.)

I pointed out that you yourself hadn’t shown how you had concluded that the evidence supported AGW, and your argument had adopted the characteristic (irrational) method of the entire warmist belief system namely:
a) assuming what is in issue, and
b) meeting any challenge with personal argument.

You responded by suggesting that I had addressed “you and not the points I raised” when the situation was precisely the reverse – your argument had been personal not substantive, and mine had pointed this out.

I then pointed out that that response was false, and asked you to provide “credible reason and evidence” for the belief that AGW is real.

Now your response is:
• you can’t say that the problem is catastrophic
• you can’t say that policy will make matters better rather than worse
• your reasoning in the final analysis is that a whole lot of climate scientists are saying it, so it must be true

But hang on. Your original post said that you “looked into it” to see “which arguments were actually supported by the evidence”.

But it turns out your intellectual method is NOT based on evidence at all.