Dacsab;
Do you know if the effect of CO2 as a greenhouse agent is linear ?
I have read that a doubling of effect requires a four times increase.
Or was it to the cube ?

Davsab, my "kind invitation" simply ruins all your consensus, bandwagon arguments ... understand? Scientists can be just as venal as anyone else when it comes to funding or protecting their fixed positions on career and reputation. Please note Bob Carter here in OLO expressing this wisdom ..... "For you see, science is not about the triumph of the weight of numbers, nor about consensus, nor about the will of the social majority. An idea such as the greenhouse hypothesis is validated not by shouting but by experimental and observational testing and logical analysis." ... "Rather, science requires that to be successful a hypothesis only needs to be clearly stated, understandable, have explanatory power and withstand testing. It takes one person, not an army, ...."

No matter how aesthetically pleasing something is, or how prestigious its supporters are, or how many billions of dollars a certain "religious industry" has bet on it..... it will always come down to ..... does the theory over-ride the evidence? e.g. Just observe how the greenhousers embraced the "hockey stick " chart and hypothesis with a complete lack of critical evaluation, ..... and "for one reason and one reason only - it told them exactly what they wanted to hear."

My other concern and I include Xoddam here as well, relates to your obvious promotion of `scientism', which is a belief held by many scientists that knowledge not acquired by professional scientists is knowledge not worth having. Take note from that website and learn something ...... i.e. "Scientism is an affront to free people everywhere as it denies the right of the public to judge the work of science, even where this work is funded from taxpayer's money. It is a formula that holds scientists above criticism, and unaccountable to anyone but their own peers. It is an anti-democratic view of the world ....."

My other chief concern relates to the role of the media when it comes to examining science. The ABC the other night were truly disgraceful but this was no surprise when they see themselves as a powerful priest class.

I am no adherent of this alleged cult of "scientism". I fervently believe in the right of the public to scrutinise and discuss scientific reasoning and results.

On the other hand, given my limited resources of time and background knowledge, I carry a pinch of salt whilst reading non-reviewed websites; I rely on the peer review process as a good winnower of chaff.

Without indiscriminately impugning online commentators, I remind you all that there are well-documented examples of abuse of public confidence by well-resourced political opponents of the scientific consensus: people with something to lose from climate change mitigation.

The websites published under the banner of keeping an eye on the "self-perpetuating socialist bureaucracy" of the scientific community contain well-researched information, most of it entirely credible, seasoned with well-researched *dis*information, also mostly credible on the surface.

Unfortunately I'm not always able to spend my time verifying every fact, contention and conclusion. Nor is most of the general public.

Other partisan websites exist with the purpose of countering this disinformation. The general public is, once again, not in a position to confirm the truth of what's published there.

The websites on both sides seem to be rapidly improving in quality and in comprehensiveness, in a popular-science-writing arms race. This are all the more interesting because they are aimed at interested lay people.

In the long run this dialectic is constructive, and it certainly seems to work *faster* than the usual to- and fro- of science in the refereed literature.

But in the short term we are left with a certain lack of confidence for the simple reason that the websites are known to be partisan. They also distract from effort which would be better spent progressing the demonstrably rigorous scientific record.

I believe that the refereed scientific literature is not partisan (though of course you are free to make baseless assertions that it is). Moreover it is guaranteed not to publish wilful disinformation. For that reason alone, I choose not to rely on the websites for facts or conclusions (though of course I'm happy to link to them for nicely-written arguments).

No wonder most scientists keep out of the public domain. Entering into open discourse on a particular field of expertise is open to misrepresentation. We have to explain some intricacies that are complex that on the surface are perceived to be simple and well understood.

Incidentally, this is why Carl Wunsch was so upset about Durkin’s “Swindle”, he was misrepresented and taken out of context.

Most people find scientific detail boring and unintelligible. These same people would probably tell these experts to pull their head in and go get a life. They can adopt a negative attitude to what the experts are telling them and either will ‘turn off’, adopt an opposing stance, pretend it is not happening or bury their head in the sand.

Or, vested interest groups have another agenda.

Research is published and peer-reviewed, the findings are critiqued by other experts. If this is scientism, so be it. If other people want to understand the science that is gained by years of experience and research – do the hard yards.

Scientists don’t want to be pilloried, hung, drawn and quartered by the public just for being scientists. No wonder it is hard to attract young people to science these days.

I may question my auto-mechanic or my doctor, I don’t question their expertise. If I want another opinion, I seek it. Sooner or later I have to make a decision based primarily on risk or cost. If 98% of auto-mechanics tell me I need my brakes fixed, I fix them. But, I am not going to see more than 2 or 3 mechanics.

Corollary, if 98% of scientists tell me the planet has a global warming problem, I expect countries, businesses and people to do something about it – and believe it or not – they are. They talk to 1000's of scientists.

Some scientists want to big-note themselves – often directing public to their websites. In the case of GW deniers, I hope they get a Nobel one day for proving the other 98% wrong.

"I may question my auto-mechanic or my doctor, I don’t question their expertise. If I want another opinion, I seek it. Sooner or later I have to make a decision based primarily on risk or cost. If 98% of auto-mechanics tell me I need my brakes fixed, I fix them. But, I am not going to see more than 2 or 3 mechanics."

Great analogy. Are you comparing the Earth's climate system to a car? Wow so easily understood. Continuing this analogy, a mechanic (or 2) usually also tell you that a great deal more work is required on your car than actually is. So you end up paying more than you need to, sounds a little Kyotoish.

"Corollary, if 98% of scientists tell me the planet has a global warming problem, I expect countries, businesses and people to do something about it – and believe it or not – they are."

Gee you must be important...

Well at least 1/4 of everyone else in the developed world think its important. You must be one of this miniority.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/07/12/eaclim112.xml

Look how seriously they're taking it in Ireland.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=467897&in_page_id=1811

Xoddam, I appreciate your response on "scientism" and perhaps unfairly I grouped you with the political, Davsab. I also appreciate your genuine efforts to examine my question "how high carbon dioxide in the past has never prevented subsequent cooling". Whilst I'm not a scientist in the professional sense I have always had the view that because we spend our lives continually immersed in cause and effect situations then we hold fast to a belief in causality (the "how") where we are all scientists. We are also all artists concerned with the "what" and philosophers interrogating the "why".

If we believe in the importance of the human desire to communicate, we have to believe in reason. Now with the internet we see it is communications many to many which is a rather significant difference because it is a meeting place, it is interactive, democratic with a deeper realism and our new enlightenment. The word is not with some exclusive and powerful group but with people who wish to unravel some exclusive knots. Scientists who genuinely believe in their expertise have an easy, economical and excellent platform to communicate their findings, thoughts, hypotheses, etc and to have them examined quite openly.

It is not surprising that television gave us the lateral but superficial postmodern, and it is not surprising that the ABC showing of the Durkin doco with its attempted debate went nowhere. However, the main point of this doco was the solar hypothesis which has historical supporting evidence that cannot be ignored if we are even remotely serious about the earth's climate. The main challenge here is our ability to separate cause from effect .... i.e. what drives change that creates derivatives else we will simply be left with this psychosis giving us closed systems "experts" who do their best to design their own climate with their faulty modeling, and unable to see outside the earth's troposphere.