exactly. That is like polling a political party convention and finding out 98% of them agree on their chosen stance on guns.

Nonsense! A political party is self-selecting on the basis of political opinions so the selection bias is of the same nature as the information being polled, a political opinion. The selection bias here is not on the basis of opinion, but on the basis of expertise. If you want to rescue your analogy, it's much more like polling the 1000 best marksmen (expertise) and finding out that 98% of them agree on their chosen stance on guns (political opinion).

Let us not also forget about the many instances of research that has been abandoned or destroyed by some of those same climate researchers because it didnt agree with their views.

Could you jog our memory a little and list these many instances?

Sorry, this paper is total garbage.

I made no claims about the quality of the paper either way. That 98% figure was cited (not by me), someone asked for the citation and I pointed them to the source of that figure.

But since you raise the selection criteria, I agree, the selection criteria would seem to introduce a strong bias toward the more prominent and expert climate scientists and exclude newer researchers or those only at the margins of the discipline.

I will remain skeptical by default.

Absolutely! It's a sad day when those of us who do accept the mainstream position on this topic feel we have to denounce skepticism (ie. the demand for proof as opposed to mere nay saying) itself, or cannot recognise reports such as these as good news.

For the claim that "98% of them to agree that it's somehow caused or contributed to by human activity," try Anderegg et al. Note that this is 98% of publishing climate scientist, not scientists in general.

I somehow doubt that that 98% would advocate abandoning scientific skepticism however. And I hope that most of them would be relieved ultimately to be proven wrong.

The problem with your assertions is that from their own emails we know that these scientists have actively worked to pervert the peer review process ...

What you know is a small selection of the stolen emails heavily redacted, put out of context and spun for political purposes. Both the academic and the judicial inquiries into the affair, who examined the entire body of evidence and gave those implicated the opportunity to explain context (as due process demands), while critical of the handling of FOI requests, exonerated Dr Jones and his unit of any serious academic wrongdoing. The snippet habitually cited to show perversion of the peer review process, in which Dr Jones is rather less than polite about a paper he thinks should never be published, was actually published. As it happens the peer review process is bigger than Phil Jones.

... therefore nullifying your belief that only published scientists should contribute to the scientific discussion.

Non sequitur. There have been cases of academic fraud in the past and the whole edifice of modern science did not come tumbling down. Had it of been the case that Dr Jones really had perverted the peer review process or committed some other species of academic fraud, the result would merely have been that we have one less expert scientist who warrants our trust.

It's not a question of who "[I] believe ... should contribute to the scientific discussion," but of who is contributing. The published science is THE discussion. If you are not in the discussion, you are not in the discussion.

In any case in these post-BEST days, isn't a bit too late in the day to regurgitate the tired "Climategate" accusations.

Actually, though, they'd be denying the attached political program, not the underlying basic science.

That's not denialism. If climate deniers were doing that there would be not problem. The question of what, if anything, to do in response the the science is inherently a political question.

Similarly, no one denies that CO2 acts to warm things up in a closed glass box.

I have seen people deny exactly that.

With all due respect Oligonicella, you are outrageously misinformed. Almost all the data is freely and publicly available, and at least for GISS even the source code is available. You can run it at home.

A shady secret conspiracy? Seems like someone has been playing you for a sucker.

And why does this make a person qualified? Why is a person unqualified if he does not hold these distinctions?

Obviously because of the next snippet you quote. It's not really to scientists, but to the published science that we must ultimately defer. If you are not publishing, or at least directly influencing what is being published, you have no seat at the table. And your opinions are just that. I was being terribly generous in allowing established Professors of relevant disciplines the right to be heard ;)

Really? We must?

We --those of use who wish to have best available factual understanding of physical reality (upon the assumption that the modern science provides the most efficacious epistemology available) --must. You, of course, are free to wallow in ignorance and delusion if you so choose. I'd suggest you don't and instead develop the skills to ascertain credible authority (let's not forget that science is 90% authority and 10% original research), but that's your choice.

Right. And according to mainstream economists ...

What economists, literary critics or astrologers believe or do provides little illumination to a discussion of how science must be conducted. Please stay on topic.

Clearly you personally know every single scientist in the world ...

Non sequitur.

--including those who haven't published

I'm sorry?! We've already established that they aren't suitably qualified. They are entitled to their opinion, of course, and I'll concede that their opinions are likely to be better founded than the ordinary person's, but they are not part of the scientific debate.

Slightly off topic, but we do have a handle on the personal beliefs of expert scientists and scientists in general on this topic, this question itself having been the the subject of some research. The popularly cited Anderegg et al. has 97% of published climate scientists agreeing on the anthropogenic nature of observed global warming. Wikipedia has a good summary here and more generally here. For the reason outline above, however, you'd be better off hitting a scientific abstracting service, or even reading the AR4 WG1 report (but wait till AR5 comes out), than conducting an opinion poll of scientists, even expert scientists.

--are intimately familiar with all their work, life history, intelligence level ...

All fairly irrelevant.

... theories

These at least are pertinent.

, etc, and are therefore able to judge the exact persons who are and who aren't "suitably qualified" to tackle this subject.

Yes I am able to make that judgement, not for the reasons you outline, but (at least in part) upon the criteria I gave in the post you are responding to. And so to could you.

Most people probably wouldn't deny that the climate keeps changing (e.g. Ice Age) but so far I've personally not seen credible evidence for the idea that mankind has much if anything to do with it - temperatures appear to have changed substantially even long before the industrial revolution. On balance it's probably natural for geeks (many of whom are naturally inquisitive)

Since, as you confess, you have not personally looked the evidence, it follows that you are an exceptional geek. :p

The use of "denier" in this context sounds no different than ... assuming that whatever is "denied" is in fact true.

Yes exactly, you finally grok it! A denier is simply someone who denies facts. And if they did not deny what we must assume (based on the best available scientific knowledge) to be true, we wouldn't be calling them deniers. Or to quote AC: "Which is why the label "denier" is appropriate."

When it comes to arguing global warming, there appear to be more parallels with religion than with actual science.

I agree. Anyone arguing against global warming, which is after all an observed phenomenon, is clearly not arguing scientifically. We really should not be arguing about it, we should be taking some action to alleviate and mitigate against it.