Mr Monbiot may be well informed and up with the debate, but Mr Delingpole is basically in the same situation as someone like me who has to pick up information where they can.

Now, I’m not really talking about climate change but about common sense here, but:

if I’m reading this correctly, you are here describing George Monbiot as being in the category marked “Knows what they’re talking about”. “well informed and up on the debate” as opposed to “someone like me who has to pick up information where they can”. Yes? Good.

Now first point: most of the information is publicly available as data, it’s just very very big and therefore people neither have the tools nor the technique to get the information, out of the data.

Second point: surely being massively underinformed a given issue is an argument for Delingpole keeping his mouth shut about it?

Their side really is based upon small numbers.

So methinks we could waste lots of time quibbling over which branch of ‘libertarians’ we are talking about.

Giles Wilkes comment about “crater the economy for the next 40 years” does stick in my throat though. There’s no evidence that anti-AGW action would do anything of the sort. It would slow the growth by a little per year, but on the other hand I recall Richard Tol saying that the effects of changes in interest rates by gvts were larger than the likely effect on the economy by anti-AGW measures.
Maybe Wilkes is taking the mickey out of the denialists, its hard to tell sometimes.

I’ve got my theory, it’s because they don’t want AGW to be happening so they come up with any old bollocks they can pretend is an argument.

If market solutions are available and popular, why do the likes of Iain Fale, Delingpole, clinically sane Melanie Philips etc. persist in their denialism?

The claim is that almost all scientists who have relevant expertise in the field of climate science or related disciplines accept it. The vast majority of your 31,000 “scientists” (there was no verification of credentials) do not fit into this category, and in relation to the number of people in the US alone who could credibly be called scientists 31,000 is tiny.

The Heidelberg Appeal makes no reference whatsoever to climate change but is routinely misrepresented by climate change deniers, notably Fred Singer. The text of the appeal states:

“We fully subscribe to the objectives of a scientific ecology for a universe whose resources must be taken stock of, monitored and preserved. But we herewith demand that this stock-taking, monitoring and preservation be founded on scientific criteria and not on irrational pre-conceptions.”

Irrational pre-conceptions seems as good as description of climate change denial as any I can think of.

And with respect to the splits in the anti-AGW gang it really is amusing how split they are. From Skeptical Science.

Still, I must tip my hat to Plimer and Monckton. Both utilised their formidable public speaking skills and rhetorical flourishes to persuasively explain why humans can’t be causing global warming. Plimer’s argument was that climate has changed in the past. Eg – climate has a high sensitivity. Monckton’s argument was that climate has a low sensitivity. I think the irony that the two were arguing contradictory positions was lost on most of the audience.

So the lesson I learnt was this. Monckton stood up, argued against man-made global warming and the skeptics in the room applauded. Plimer then gave an argument that contradicted Monckton’s assertions and the skeptics applauded again. In a sense, this perfectly encapsulates the skeptic movement as a whole. Global warming skepticism isn’t about furthering scientific understanding but proving that humans can’t be causing global warming. How you get to that conclusion is left as an exercise to the reader, with internal consistency not a prerequisite. Two skeptic arguments can contradict each other, even on the same debating stage, so long as the common enemy of man-made global warming is refuted.

I had begun to think they had. After all, the banking crisis had left the City boys with reams of worthless paper and they need something to sell. Carbon Trading looked set to be the new derivitives market.

But then I came across this blog written by Andrew Neill:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/dailypolitics/andrewneil/2010/01/the_dam_is_cracking.html

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/ten_facts_about_global_warming.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition

now signed by 31000 scientists

Okay, lets play a game: you name a credible anti and we’ll name a credible AGW supporter and we’ll see who runs out of names first.

Erm, haven’t you actually been paying attention? The libertarians (for this purpose, those who believe in markets) have won this entire debate.

You’ll have noted that the solutions on offer are either 1) cap and trade or 2) carbon taxes.

Everyone agrees that we do one of these two….or at least, everyone does in public, with governmental power.

Markets ain’t perfect, externalities being the obvious example, so what do we do when we have externalities? Incorporate them into market prices and then let the market sort them out.

This is the libertarian answer.

All those arguing for different answers (govts picking winners, govts banning certain activities, govts deciding what we may do) are outside the mainstream here.

The mainstream answer is, for perhaps the only time I can think of in my lifetime, the libertarian/classically liberal one. Adjust markets so that they do incorporate true costs and then leave well alone.

What impresses me is the lack of scientific consensus behind the AGW hypothesis. It is the sam group of people who get cited, time after time.

A question of personal interest: a thousand architects and engineers believe it’s highly likely that the World Trade Centre towers were brought down in a controlled demolition. If the “lack of scientific consensus” causes you to doubt AGW, presumably you’ll feel the same way on this question?

How on earth are you measuring this? There are thousands of published papers related to climate change by thousand of different scientists. As far as can be measured the pro-AGW’s greatly outnumber the antis, see

http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/climate_authors_table.html

There is no significant body of peer-reviewed research which challenges the view that global warming is happening and is largely man made.

And they weigh in with things about scientific process and mindset rather than just appeals to authority. Question real climate and you get a highly technical paper about lower-tropopausal warming as a response.

In other words, you argue about science and people respond with references to actual scientific research. Arguments about scientific method and mindset are oftens distractions to divert attention from the fact that the skeptics can’t point to actual credible evidence to support their views. And appeals to authority are not neccessarly wrong – in what other branch of science or any discipline that requires a particular brand of specialised expertise is it considered unreasonable to defer to those who posess such expertise?

Well I wouldn’t argue with that definition. But there are people who think like that when it comes to AGW – I don’t think it is fair to blanket everyone who has doubts about AGW with this label but there are certainly plenty of them out there – the likes of Plimer, Phillips, Delingpole, everyone who describes AGW as a “scam” or a “fraud”. They literally do think there is a conspiracy involving scientists and politicians peddling claims that they know to be untrue.

And while I think Shatterface @58 is right up to a point, when we talk about the views of “scientists” on AGW (or any other subject) I think that the ones that really count are those scientists who are actually active in the study of climate or closely associated fields.

What impresses me is the lack of scientific consensus behind the AGW hypothesis. It is the sam group of people who get cited, time after time. The antis seems to outnumber the AGWs. And they weigh in with things about scientific process and mindset rather than just appeals to authority. Question real climate and you get a highly technical paper about lower-tropopausal warming as a response.

Do the AGWs have something to hide? They do their best to make it seem so.

Oh and the Greenpeace angle is a scream…remember how wrong they were about the environmental cost of disposing of the Brent Spar platform!

We would give their opinions a certain weight in a discussion about linguistics or sociology.

Or, in the case of Noam Chomsky, politics, history, fascism and all sorts of things.

The 911 and moon landing conspiracies are ridiculous because they’re adopted by people who will irrationally jump to the least likely conclusion.

I’m an extremely rational individual. I’m totally relaxed on planes and I shop for holidays to Mexico during swine flu pandemics. I weigh up the likelihood and the quality of the evidence that is presented to me and I act upon it. I did the same thing with AGW and saw a plethora of vested interests for those involved in the research. I question the quality of the evidence. I’m not sure it’s wrong and indeed I think that it’s quite possible but I still skeptically question the evidence. I don’t think that the bias or bad science is intentionally fraudulent but ,IMO, it doesn’t bring the argument to a position where it is beyond doubt.

Stepping on from whether AGW exists, is what you do about it if it does. That’s where I’d definitely be heading in a different direction to Monbiot. The question is whether Monbiot will let me tread my own path or will he drag me and the rest of us to hell with him.

“what I think is happening is governments just cannot resist the opportunity to tax us more, to set up huge bureaucracies, and this is what Copenhagen’s about. It’s not about science, it’s not about morality, it’s not about the Third World – it’s about money, and it’s about governments putting their hands in our pockets, taking out our money, and having to go through sets of sticky fingers to end up disappearing somewhere else in the world.”

I think that when, in order to hold a view you need not only some evidence and a theory, but also a fairly comprehensive theory about how a vast majority of others have taken the opposite view, then ‘conspiracy theorist’ is quite fair. A lot of modern Marxists seem this way too. But since Plimer needs not just some (apparently dodgy) geology, but also a theory about the bad faith of governments, it sounds like a conspiracy theory.

It doesn’t need Blofeld and a white cat . . .

In other words training in one scientific field gives you practical knowledge of a *scientific method* which will also be useful in evaluating truth claims in other fields.

It’s that method that distinguishes modern science from simple taxonomy or outright woo.

http://www.intelligencesquared.com/interviews-lectures-conversations/George-Monbiot-on-the-climate-crisis-Part-II

Notice how the onus is on Monbiot to provide the solutions to each and every complex problem. He’s got some great suggestions though. I kid you not, I was belly laughing at some of them. AGW may be true but nothing could be worse than this… what was the phrase… crazed tin-foil hat wearer planning our escape.

Given all the commentary on our broken society etc, you’d think people might pay more attention to what sociologists might be saying……

But largely because the libertarians (on the whole) have spent the past 2 decades denying there is an issue to address, rather than working out a form of environmental libertarianism to propose. I’d imagine if they did they would get a great deal of support for such positions (they could start by pointing out the environmental damage governments – particularly the military – have done historically).