Joe,

Be sure to wash your hands after the external application.

There has been quite a critical reaction to my Deniers post. This is puzzling because 61% of Australians say ‘global warming is a serious … problem [and] we should begin taking steps now… Only 10% say ‘until we are sure that global warming is really a problem, we should not take any steps…’ (Lowy 2019). Do we have most of that 10% here?
I need to provide some backup. I believe in always being courteous and civilized up front. I would resort to stronger language only when warranted, or when things are dire – unlike some commenters!
I believe in free speech a priori (at first), but limited by truth and public interest. In my morality, people should be discouraged or prevented from repeatedly saying things that are (a) wrong and (b) harmful. (Truth as shown by science and the historical record). Examples are: crying fire in a crowded theatre, or preaching gays will go to hell.
My paper Deniers, you have been warned! is intended for habitual deniers who will not enter discussion, and yet spread false information widely. For example: Lavoisier, Galileo, IPA, Heartland Institute, Peter Smith of Quadrant online, Selby, Alan Jones, Ian Plimer… They are prepared to risk destroying our only planet, in order to line their pockets by selling books and articles. Very wrong, and very harmful.
I am qualified in physics and engineering, and taught topics in planetary science at three universities. For me, and most informed people I know, the evidence for AGW passed 50% (more likely than not) in the 1980s. Given the dire consequences, this mandates strong and immediate action.
I meet many scientists. I discussed some of these things with Michael Mann (of the hockey stick) over dinner on Saturday, and with Robin Batterham soil scientist and past Australia’s Chief Scientist on Wednesday. The science was settled 30 years ago!
If you still have doubts, I direct you to http://www.realclimate.org/ Or you might like to join your local Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL), and listen to experts providing evidence. If you have real evidence to the contrary, you can present that.

Ian Bryce, give us a single item of definite proof that CO2 has any real effect on the temperature of the planet, or take your mumbo jumbo off to the mums blog, where it may be acceptable.

runner,

Here's another one today from the media joke book on AGW: Greta Thunderpants scowling under a headline " Greta Thunberg argues net Zero emissions by 2050 'too late'.

The world is in thrall to a child with no life experience and no specialised knowledge of anything!

Thanks, Ian.

Can I suggest that, in your spare time, you get hold of a copy of Arthur Miller's "Crucible", written in the fifties as a response to McCarthy's witch-hunting efforts ? That play partly ruined his career.

I'm wondering what you might mean by "Deniers, you have been warned! " Or what ? Do you have detention and re-education camps for recalcitrants in mind ? There would be a gradation of deniers, from these who deny there is any global warming at all, up to those who won't fall in 100 % behind those termed "alarmists". Like most contributors to OLO, I would fall in between somewhere those extremes: I'm not sure that a two-inch rise in sea-level, and a two-degree temperature rise, over a couple of centuries, are anything unusual in human history - temperature rises and falls seem to have thousand-year cycles, give or take, and the current rise is on-track.

I'm not even sure that another two-degree rise would be all that disastrous across the northern hemisphere, across Canada or Siberia or dear old Scotland and Ireland. Wouldn't that open up perhaps millions of square kilometres to grain etc. production ? And help to feed tens of millions of children across the world who go to sleep each night hungry ?

"1984" would also be a valuable read as well. I'm tempted to recommend Swift's "Gulliver's Travels", especially about the bitter dispute between Big-Enders and Pointy-Enders, but I'm too tactful to do that.

Joe

'This is puzzling because 61% of Australians say ‘global warming is a serious … problem [and] we should begin taking steps now'

Yeah I suspect far more than 61% in Saudi Arabia believe death to then infidel. Indoctrination does strange thins to people Ian as shown by the tantrum throwing extinction rebellion likes.

btw have the fools blaming the bushfires on coal mining and scaring the daylights out of kids apologised yet?