"We have no means, other than computer simulation, of teasing out whether the human contribution to CO2 emissions is tipping the system into instability, or simply being damped out and absorbed into the whole process"
Exactly what is your problem with computer simulation? The climate is unfortunately incredibly complicated system. There are very very compliated feedbacks in it. The most important measure (the sea surface temperature) is not as well recorded as the land temperature. Yet there is more energy in the top 1m of the sea than in the whole atmosphere. The strongest greenhouse gas is WATER VAPOR. Which is totally out of control of anyone. You leave that out you get completely the wrong answer. Exactly how to you propose to model this stuff without computers? Airplanes, race cars and nuclear bombs are modelled pretty well with computers. The climate models are not perfect by any streach, but you can see by how good the 5 day weather forcast is that they do have a decent knowledge of the atmosphere now.
Science is about doing the best you can do with the tools you have. There is enormous variation in the estimates of warming from 1 degree (which will not make much difference) to 6 degrees which will radically change all life on earth.
"I'm not denying climate change, far from it, I am saying that there are aspects of it that smell of bad science, and the demonisation of skepticism is a very dangerous precedent"
Well the problem of course is it not sceptecism we are seeing it is denialism. Picking holes in small bits of the science, attacking the integrety of the scientists. The artful selection of data to give misleading impressions. Like the claim that the earth has not warmed much since 1979 (when there was a new series of satellite measurements), ignoring hte fact that 1979 was a particularly hot year in the context of the time, so what was considered hot in 1979 is now considered normal...
The fact that the absolute miniumum of arctic sea ice was in 2007, coupled with the claim that the ice has been increasing for the last two years. True but completely misleading.
The extrapoloation of a warm temperatures in europe in the "medievil warm period" to be a global phenomonen to explain away current record global temperatures. People seem to have a problem with the GLOBAL part of global warming.
The "14 tree ring data from the NORTHERN HEMESPHERE" disproving GLOBAL warming, thing which was just insane.
Yes scientists are imperfect, yes they often have an agenda. BUT that is science, it is messy not done by people in ivory towers, that is the way all science has always been, but it WORKS. In the end the facts speak for themselves and truth will out.
"the fact that the majority of scientists believe the theories says absolutely nothing about the science"
Man you have a terrible opinion of scientists. But that is the point, the whole game has been played against the integrety of the scientists not against the science itself (because the first one you can attack, the other one no not really, it is in, it is settled). Do you not beleive the experts in any field? How do you make any decisions at all? I guess the only way you will be convincied is if you went and got a ph.d. in atmospheric science, made your own computer model and looked at the results. See you in 20 years then.