Now if only that quote had come from the Attorney General, instead of Electronic Frontiers Australia...

Welcome to the party; they've been calling me, my family, my friends and everyone else for years.

I can recite the pitch opening from memory by now (it almost always begins, "I am from the Windows Technical Support Department", in a strong Indian accent). At first I was irritated ("Huh? Go away"), then angry ("Don't ever call me again!"), then amused ("Why yes! Which one of the seven completely different boxen are you referring to?"), then bored ("Computer? You mean my Google pad thing?"), then concerned ("Do you realise your supervisor is making you break the law?"), and now I just hang up mid-syllable.

And even then they sometimes ring right back, just in case I hung up by accident.

So not only did he "negotiate" RI into loaning his startup $75M (which was a huge chunk of their $125M jobs-development budget, and was pretty controversial at the time), he did so claiming he'd sunk "$35-$38 million" of his own money into the company.

Turned out, the figure was closer to $3M, and he promptly paid himself back with the RI loan money, removing any personal stake in the success of his company.

Funny how 19 out of 20 earth scientists are completely convinced by their observations that it is man-made, then.

Yes, I read what you said earlier (dunno why you think saying it twice will be more convincing), and I notice you're still carefully avoiding specifics. I've have read the CRU quotes being bandied about, and the context surrounding those quotes, and I could only guess at what specific parts of those emails you're so convinced are evidence of "bad faith". But to be perfectly honest, I don't much care - since none of this involves challenging any actual science or data, it's purely your opinion of their comments, and not a reflection on their work (which, as mentioned, has been thoroughly cleared).

So I guess this is the source of your apparent bias. You read some comments (possibly out of context) that you didn't like, so now you feel that justifies discarding their conclusions, without having to challenge their data or methodology. I'm curious if this means you also disregard the (remarkably similar) conclusions of all those other scientists, such as the NASA, NOAA and Berkely studies. I'd even ask if you have looked at the data yourself (as you say I must do), but I'm betting that (not being a full-time climatologist) all you've seen is a couple of cherry-picked examples that fit your own views - yet you still feel you can toss out the work of thousands of scientists who have looked at (all) the raw data.

As I recall, you quoted a line or two about extreme weather and claimed (without any justifications) that it was "irrelevant" (certainly looked relevant to me, and many others). You also complained that there wasn't enough emphasis on the positives, while hand-waving away all the many negatives and the reasoning behind them. Whenever I link to a discussion or study that provides evidence against your assertions, you drop that line and assert something else. Sorry, but I can't imagine anyone would find that convincing.

And at last we agree. Since we've now come full circle, where you're simply re-quoting yourself rather than backing up those original comments with any reasoning or evidence, I'm no longer holding out hope of learning anything new from you. And I doubt you're listening to me, if you're dismissing all the qualified experts too. Thanks for the attempt, but I don't see any point continuing this discussion either.

The best thing we can do is to eliminate religions. All of them. Religions have been responsible for stoping progress, scientific discoveries, medical improvements, etc., while at the same time being responsible for the deaths of millions.

"Science flies you to the moon, religion flies you into buildings."

And we're back to the vague accusations again. Sorry, it's not clear at all. If the CRU scientists were cleared of any charges of scientific misconduct, and nothing was found that might alter their scientific conclusions, then what precisely is the problem you have with them?

And again, what makes you think they were not? You still think it's their bias rather than your own?

Are we still discussing the WGII authors' alleged bias, or is this about the CRU guys now?

I'd agree that ignoring data "just because you don't like it" is absolutely bad science. In fact, I'd happily describe that as "scientific misconduct", particularly given the high-profile, high-stakes nature of the research. That sort of thing could be very bad for one's career, if someone were to review one's work closely and discover this. Luckily, we had eight such reviews.

If you are indeed accusing the CRU scientists of doing this (hard to be sure, since you still have yet to make or link to a single accusation of any substance), then you'd also have to accuse all eight of the inquiry committees of thorough incompetence and/or collusion - or concede that, in the view of each of the inquiries, there was a perfectly acceptable scientific reason for any data discarded, not "just because they didn't like it".

Yet. Justifying pure research always requires this proviso, and I'm sure Feynman was fully aware of that.

Well, he never used the word "corrupted". Closest quote I could find to what you're saying is "it seems to have been the general policy then to not try to repeat psychological experiments", which is not exactly the same, is it?

Would that be those same scientists who were cleared of all scientific misconduct charges by no less than eight independent inquiries? About the worst you could accuse them of was a little too much snark.

Far from it. While those specific events cannot be blamed on GW with any certainty, there are plenty of papers that say that extreme weather events will increase as a direct result of GW (since more energy is being added to the system). There's every reason to suggest that these kind of consequences will only increase.

Maybe, just maybe, it's because what they're seeing is overwhelmingly that the negatives outweigh the positives? Is there any reason their statements must be balanced? This isn't a diplomatic negotiation, it's a summary of the facts and conclusions, as best as we understand them.

It seems very much like you're looking for conclusions that agree with your own, and when you don't find them, you're projecting some sort of bias onto the authors. Have you ever considered the bias might be on your part instead? After all, their combined expertise and awareness of the issues massively outweighs your own, yet you assume that it's them that's wrong rather than yourself.

Yes well, when you start from the position that your opinions (based on a few basics and a brief skimming of the web) are more valid than theirs (based on centuries of collective expertise and full access to all the raw data), perhaps you should be worrying about something closer to home first.

Entire fields "corrupted"? That's a dangerous-sounding generalisation, but it wouldn't surprise me if bad practices were all too common in some of the dodgier "sciences". I could believe that more rigorous scientists would abandon certain fields (like parapsychology) simply because of the continued lack of repeatable results, leaving only the hacks to waffle on.

I like a good Feynman story as much as the next guy, but you're still alleging that this applies to climatologists too, once again without any evidence. You want us to believe on your say-so that, despite the intense media interest, many peer-reviewed papers, enormous political, economical and geophysical stakes, and the huge controversy surrounding the field, all those thousands of scientists are throwing their reputations and careers to the winds by commonly taking shortcuts and not checking their work, or even each other's. You want us to ignore the multiple, independent bodies of work (e.g. NASA, CRU, NOAA) that have all closely agreed, even when studies specifically set out to carefully check that work.

If you want us to believe that climate science is full of unprincipled scientists with poor methodology, then you'll have to explain why this is apparently only true selectively, presumably for the WG2 projections you're taking issue with, because your unsubstantiated insinuations aren't particularly convincing on their own.