The very fact that the debate is characterised by "abuse and vilification" shows that the so-called science is not.

Real scientists don't answer a challenge to their data or algorithms by hiding them and screaming "denialist", as if the issue were one of faith. Nor do they appeal to a head-count, to absent authority, or to circular assumptions.

Yet take away all these fallacies, and what is left of the warmist argument? Nothing.

For example, evolutionary scientists faced, and still face, abuse and vilification, but they don't answer back in like coin. They just continue to produce data and reason supporting their case.

But Poirot's utterly circular thinking is just typical of the whole shemozzle. She rejects data and argument *because* they are critical of the orthodoxy! Unbelievable. And of course totally unscientific.

At no stage do the warmists ever join issue with the vexed question of vested interests in government funding. They just persist in treating it as an affront to their dignity, an absurdity, to mention it. Yet unless that variable can be controlled for, obviously there will be no end to the debate, even after the warmists have been proved decisively wrong, for the simple reason that they continue to make money from it!

So it's perfectly appropriate of the skeptics to mock and revile the warmists as religious zealots and corrupt.

The solution is not to refer the question to a royal commision or any other government-sponsored decision-making process.

It's to simply stop government funding for the whole exercise. Then we'll see whether the Poirots of the world really want to send the prime minister with 114-man delegations, including hairdressers and chefs, to corrupt gabfests on the other side of the world.

The warmists are just the modern-day version of the corrupt aristocracy before the French revolution.

OK Poirot,

You say, << The two sides can't be "brought together" under such circumstances. >>

So, under what circumstances do you think the two sides could be brought together?

How about this for a suggestion?

A commission of enquiry of yet to be determined composition and terms of reference. Held in Australia with invitations to participate to any nominee from anywhere in the world from any organization.

(Before someone tables cost as an objection, the quest for de-carbonization has already sucked the equivalent of $US 1 Trillion out of the EU economy. Even without our own CO2 Tax the LNP Direct Action proposes $2.5 bn.)

Six judges sit to evaluate the evidence from both sides. Each side gets to elect a panel of say ten permanent experts. In addition, each panel can call upon further expert witnesses as required.

All claims, forecasts, models, scientific evidence and expert opinion to be considered from all sides by the judges on its legal/evidentiary and substantiated merits.

The whole of the UN IPCC could be represented on one panel if you like, and all the scientists making up the consensus can be available to the commission as additional expert witnesses, or visa versa, or a mix as preferred.

Each panel gets the right to challenge nominees for the opposing panel and expert witnesses. The grounds might be qualifications, experience or relevance. We could even waive “conflict of interest” issues?

Public submissions could be invited, outstanding questions or issues could be nominated and perhaps the most frequently asked public questions could be addressed with the official responses being published in the judicial findings?

As posed in my original article, << Could a Royal Commission into human induced climate change draw out the issues of difference and offer reconciliation? Are there other alternatives? What might they be? What might the Commissions TOR include? >>

Cossomby
"I am one of those with some scientific knowledge..."

Then you will know that scientific knowledge cannot be based on logical fallacies, and that it is a logical fallacy to reason by groupthink, by appeal to absent authority, by assuming what is in issue, by asserting values from facts, by asserting that mere power decides questions of fact or ethics, and that subjective values can be objectively measured.

Therefore you must admit that the warmists have no case either in science or policy, because if you don't, you're affirming fallacies in issue, which proves you have no scientific knowledge as to what is in issue.

The problem is precisely that the warmists' case has been demolished over and over and over again, and its supporters have nothing but to keep squarking about how an entire industry of government-funded vested interest cannot possibly be questioned. That's it. That's their entire "scientific" argument. It's absurdly stupid and corrupt.

Poirot
"The two sides can't be "brought together" under such circumstances."

So people should be shot for not agreeing to fund the warmists? Because that's what your argument amounts to.

If they can't be brought together, then why does that automatically decide the issue in favour of government action on the basis of government-funded policy? As we have just demonstrated in threads where you are critical of the government, you don't even accept your own argument.

So at least we're agreed that your argument is hypocritical nonsense!

spindoc
The notion that the government is our "parent" is precisely what caused this empire of fraud and abuse in the first place.

Poirot and the warmists will agree to fund all the climate science and the climate junkets and the climate policies.

Won't they? Oh! So it turns out it's all about the money, and they're hypocrites and parasites after all!

JKJ,

"Real scientists don't answer a challenge to their data or algorithms by hiding them and screaming "denialist", as if the issue were one of faith. Nor do they appeal to a head-count, to absent authority, or to circular assumptions."

Yes!

But we're debating this on a non-scientific forum.

Remember scientists don't come here because people who aren't scientists abuse them.

Whatever you think of "the science", the question is taken up by government and voted on by ordinary people.

I know you don't agree with "government", JKJ, but that's the system in place.

So ordinary people vote for governments who implement their agenda.

If ordinary people are being fed junk-scientific conclusions as somehow representative of scientific integrity and peer-reviewed empirical evidence, then we have a situation where they are voting with a blindfold on.

Very boring and so last week to pull out the "religious zealot" take.

It's a not-very-clever, now hackneyed, cliché invented by those who support the dissemination of junk-science in place of "real science" from "real scientists".

Can't you think of anything original?

(Now I'll eagerly await your tried and true "come back" - something along the lines of your usual to Poirot:

" You obviously agree with shooting people in order to force them to submit to funding any and every government activity against their will...."

Lol!.... with bells on!

JKJ,

"So people should be shot for not agreeing to fund the warmists? Because that's what your argument amounts to."

Well that's given me my belly laugh of the morning!

You actually beat me to it!

(Not that you're predictable or anything:)

.......

spindoc,

Will get back to you a little later when time allows.

Jardine: Thank you for demonstrating my point.

I addressed the issue of posters assuming that others are left-wing and therefore discounting what they say.

I did not comment on the merits or otherwise of AGW or on the science or the politics. Indeed from my post you could not tell what my views are on AGW. I have posted on the subject before but I should be upfront and admit that I 'debate' in the classical debating-society sense - that is, I tend to post a challenge to the on-going trend of any topic regardless of my own personal views. (I have suggested in the past that everyone should try arguing the opposite case to what they 'believe' -a useful technique to counter the normal tendency towards bias confirmation).

So you have done exactly what I criticised - jumping to conclusions as to other people's views, assuming they differ from yours and therefore criticising them for their idiocy (eg 'you're affirming fallacies in issue, which proves you have no scientific knowledge'), then going on to a soapbox declaration.

I am a sceptic. But for me this means that I am also sceptical of sceptics, including myself. I am always questioning my ideas and work: why do I think that? What are my biases?

I think you should maybe do so too. Why are you so certain that scientists are 'an entire industry of government-funded vested interest'? What are you biases?