I don't remember exactly but I seem to recall that I participated in at least five debates with these two groups. Again, TFA refers back to 2003 and some things are lost in a decade. We did fairly well with the referendums but ultimately, comcast and SBC spent around $2.1 mil in advertising IIRC and we were only able to raise around $40k for our side. It was a good fight but we just couldn't overcome the robo-calling with do you still beat your wife type questions and the full page ads in the local papers etc.

Batavia, Geneva and St. Charles Illinois. I was a member of the committee that worked on getting this initiative through each community. One of the members posted this interview with Broadband Reports back in the day....

http://www.dslreports.com/show...

Do you know how everything in the world works? Well then, you must be a stupid person. Do you use regional dialect that someone else might not understand? Well then, you must be a stupid person. do you occasionally mistype a word in your sentence? Well then, you must be a stupid person.

No, you would get a ticket. And the jackass that willfully plugged his car into the outlet without permission should have gotten a ticket.

I'm not arguing the validity of the results from the research. But, just for arguments sake, lets play with the idea that the researchers published a report that established that they had overestimated the temperature differences by 50%. Would you still, right now, be compelled to say this lends tremendous credibility to the scientific community? Would it boost your confidence in the work they're doing? Would the integrity of the published results be less than previous studies have provided?

Before jumping to the conclusion that I'm a denier...

I have been convinced that the Earth is in a warming phase.
I have been convinced that humans should reduce the output of greenhouse gases.
I have also been convinced that most of the carbon credit and associated businesses that have been started to support it are, shall we say, powered by less then altruistic motives.
I have been convinced that some politicians and business leaders are making significant amounts of money or adding to their power and influence by evangelizing the push to blame all global warming on human influence.

I don't take the extreme position that we are the only cause. Some small amount of climate change can be attributed to human activity. And, we need to get off carbon based energy production. And we need to be better stewards of all of our natural resources. We are not doing a very good job of convincing the majority of the population. Part of the problem is that even though we own the information outlets, we are using failing methods to get our message across. Stop tell everyone that "deniers' are slack-jawed mouth-breathers. All of us need to stop being bullies that act like pussies when we don't get our way. Basically, we need to stop being jackasses to anyone that asks a question or expresses a difference of opinion and we might actually start to make some headway.

Thank you for the additional information. This seems reasonable.

Note to Aighearach: if the story is running on MSNBC, you're hearing biased, paritsan version that won't have the facts. FTFY