""AGW has been proven to be bogus!1!!1!!" Response: Fuck yeah, and the moon landing was a hoax; 9/11 was executed by Cheney; the holocaust is a fraud; and the sun is a motherfucka charriot of fire."

This illustrates the perils of arguing using allegories.

After reading about half of Lomborgs rebuttal, I think the more pertinent issue is "can Friel read"? Perhaps we can set up a literacy fund to help the good man get some remedial ed?

As for your assertion that "Lomborg paints himself a persecuted DaVinci":

1. As far as I know, he has never compared himself to DaVinci. I.e, you are making shit up.

and

2. He has had the pleasure of being convicted (and then aquitted) of the novel thought-crime of "unintentional dishonesty". Gotta love those cultists - they are at least an inventive bunch.

"Based on the fact that the numbers he used for deforestation were not applicable to the problem, aggregated over different collection methods, and completely irrelevant to the problem caused by deforestation: loss of habitat for endemic species."

The horror! "not applicable to the problem and aggregated over different collection methods" (in someones opinion)! This man should obviously be read of out polite society!

"So yes, we can ignore him. As for your statement "that global warming "scientists" were dishonest in their research", that's not true either. The closest thing that has been demonstrated is that some researchers are human and petty in their responses to other people's requests and research. That's a long way from demonstrating that EVERY researcher has faked his research."

Thats not the point - if secrecy, intolerance, conspiracy against dissenters and sheer dishonesty and sloppiness is frequent at the top levels of a discipline, then there is hardly any need for blanket deception for the results coming out of it to be unreliable. Especially when the discipline is largely concerned with the prediction of the distant future.

You do not "debunk", you ostracize. The main modus of debate of AGW proponents from day one has been moralistic, not empirical.

Hence the conversion of "skeptic" from badge of honor to a mark of shame, and the introduction of the "denier" label to further amp up the hysteric persecution of those who dont go with the program.

This also explains the skepticism of the general public. Joe Blow doesnt know his tree rings from his ice cores, but he sure knows what fanaticism looks like.

After all, how can one trust a science where "skepticism" is career death? The answer is simple: One cant. And as the tip of the iceberg is now visible for all to see - the remaining question is how much is hidden by the sea...

The above poster illustrates something very important:

Part of the reason one should be very skeptical of AGW alarmists is their rabies-like demeanor and aggression against all that they perceive as even the slightest heresy against their little modern day apocalypse cult.

Wider implication: Never trust the results in any discipline that is subject to a reputation cascade. (I.e, disciplines where even mild dissenters are ostracized)

"The NY Times is not left-wing. The Guardian is left-wing. Unless you're using the American definition of 'left' which is basically anyone who objects to bringing back the workhouses."

Yes, US conservatives are surely fighting hard to "bring back the workhouses". Care to mention any?

"In any given election, 99% of Americans vote for candidates who support large government spending on social projects, so I'm not sure how right-wing the population really is."

Ever heard of quantitative thinking? You should try it some time.

"Bear in mind the teabaggers are a very small group of Fox News astroturfers who had no problems with big government when a white president was giving blank cheques to the military."

Indeed - conservative support for the military is surely conditioned on the president being white.

On a side note, I've been thinking - now that you classy libs have moved political discourse a step forward by bringing sexual slurs to straight 'news' reporting with the teabag explosion, how should Fox et al keep the populist edge?

I say Liberals should henceforth be known as "buttfuckers". Further expansion is possible of course: "Liberal buttfuckers took it up the ass yesterday in Mass...", etc. etc.

Let me ask you, how the hell can you "quotemine" by publishing (as a rule) full emails (and data files)?

That are fully searchable (by the thousands) on the mutherfrigging internet?

"Quotemining" works in books, on TV, in magazines and documentaries. But it doesn't work when you are linking straight to the source.

In short, you need to come up with better bullshit excuses.

a) Your characterization of the released emails and data is... well, bullshit.

Corrupting peer review by blackballing 'unreliable' voices, conspiring to oust "troublesome" journal editors, keeping published papers out of the IPCC "even if we have to redefine what the peer-review litterature is", etc. is not "playing with scenarios".

Rigging your models to paper over huge flaws (I.e. tree rings not being good temperature proxies) is not "playing with scenarios".

Deleting data and programs rather than keeping them open for review, even when illegal, is not "playing with scenarios".

And the sheer incompetence on display in their modelling is most certainly not "playing with scenarios".

And so on.

Now, moving on to the issue of extrapolation: We don't know either way, but we can make educated guesses.

- We now know that some of the leading people in the field behave in a corrupt manner to reach their preordained conclusions.

- We have long known that the field has built up a perverse incentive structure, where holding "correct" views yields career advancement and public prestige, while holding "incorrect" views leads to career death and public ostracism.

Needless to say, good science is rarely produced under those conditions.

"Errrm ... because it's such god-damned good science ?"

Yes, clearly, as we can glimse from the data and correspondence released.

"It's entirely possible the models and theories are wrong. On the other hand if they're right, and there is not good evidence they're wrong, then waiting an arbitrary time to react results in an inability to react effectively."

That's the nifty thing about putting armageddon way into the future - you will never be held to account if (when) your prediction is wrong.

Of course, we also now know that some major names in the field were quite exasperated that their models had failed to predict recent climactic trends.

"All the debate from the non-climate change side is ad hominem. Al Gore flies a plane, scientists are in it for the money etc clap trap."

Bullshit. People like 'MM' are obviously doing very serious work. That is why the 'scientists' in the emails are obsessed with them, and why it is such a priority to them to make sure that Macintyre, et al don't get their hands on the data.

"Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real."

The corrupt culture of "science" (word used broadly) on display obviously most certainly undermines the case.

For a long time, climatology has been unique among the sciences, as it has faced a starkly politicized incentive structure for researchers.

Thanks to the emails, we now know beyond a doubt (among other things) that the entire process of peer review in the field (especially with regards to the critical IPCC reports) has been messed up on purpose by Jones, Mann, et al.

"The people who are trying to sow FUD against AGW know that it doesn't matter what was actually in those emails."

a) They are online. It's not hard to check.

b) Do you seriously think that "it doesn't matter" what is actually in the emails (and data)? If they had been all about ordering takeout and yesterday's game, would anyone have cared? The answer is obvious.

"Hire more people to fulfill FOI request if that's what it takes."

It's pretty clear they spent more time dodging FOI requests compared to the time it would have taken to comply with them.

"Finally, here is a question for all the deniers out there. If the engineering feat required today was to actually warm up the planet, how would we do it? I think that the best answer would be to do what were are already doing today."

Depends on the feedback mechanisms between CO2 and the really potent greenhouse gasses. Which it is now very clear that the researchers in question haven't got a very good handle on.

Finally, about the term "denier" - this little "trick" (sorry) to tie a broad range of "unacceptable" opinions to holocaust denial, etc. is a departure from good science, which is not supposed to be conducted through invective and ostracism against differing viewpoints, etc.

That the AGW club have taken the right to depart from this, in order to behave as assholes when silencing non-conformist voices places an immense burden on them to follow the most stringent scientific protocol imaginable.

I think it's pretty clear by now that they fail to live up even to that standard.

This is assuming that the other nice little lines in the graph are of superior quality, of couse. (I.e. the dismissal of urban heat islands as a factor, etc.)

Given the stringency and academic openness on display from the climate research community, that is far from certain.

"What are you implying? The ENTIRE UN is in on the "conspiracy" to give more funding to a select group of scientists, so that they can take more trips to Tahiti?"

There is nothing "secret" about it - the group is known as the IPCC and will of course like most organizations defend itself to the death.