The public mistrust of science now appears to be vindicated.
Science will forever suffer for these misdeeds.

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” – Juvenal

It struck me, recently, that use of the term “denier” by many AGW believers to describe the position of AGW skeptics is a misappropriation of the position of skeptics very analogous to the misappropriation of “atheist” by religious believers.

Religious believers tendentiously define “atheism” as ‘denying the existence of god,’ when in fact it means living without a god belief. The latter is a very different position from mere denial, as everyone in this forum knows well.

And so, regarding AGW, skeptics are not “deniers” of climate warming, or climate change. They are skeptics of the scientific evidence, and therefore live without a belief in AGW.

Calling AGW skeptics “deniers” is just a believer’s first step in squelching dissent by demonizing. Demonizing a position is the easiest way to blockade rational challenge, and that blockade is the sole rationale for the tactic.

And addressing the specific point of scientific evidence for AGW: There is none whatever.

You should know that there are differences among deniers. Some reject the whole IPCC package, i.e., deny that global warming is happening and that it has been scientifically proven that the driver is anthropogenic CO2. Others, like me, deny only that the anthropogenic CO2 connection has been scientifically proven.

Initially, I accepted the hypothesis based on Al Gore’s scary presentation. However, after studying Patrick Frank’s, “A Climate of Belief” (SKEPTIC, Vol.14, No. 1, 2008), and being a retired instrumentation engineer, it became clear that an integral part of the scientific method has not been presented to the public: the cumulative effect of data uncertainties on the predictions of temperature changes. You would know that, to be useful and credible, the results of statistical analyses are presented with error limits.

In the interests of brevity, I will not, here, re-iterate Patrick Frank’s analyses which he so ably presents in the SKEPTIC article. Suffice it to say that ad hominem attacks are unwarranted for deniers that the anthropogenic CO2 connection has been “scientifically proven,” consensus or not.

Ronald W. Pate, P.Eng (retired)

The fact is that there are areas of science out of which it is almost impossible to keep one’s personal views. Take racial differences in personality and aptitudes, for example. This is an area of science that is almost closed off to discussion because it is so controversial. http://www.newsweek.com/id/193534

Science is not immune to politics. Not by a long shot.

I agree for the most part. We can’t tell them to kill their economy now – but even china is starting to put up the biggest wind farm in the world in the Gobi Desert, they get it. Let them have their power now – but let’s not kill the progress we’ve started and see if we can nudge our way into less polluting, invasive energy technologies all over the world. It’s not going to happen overnight – but slow and steady wins the race, as they say…

By the way – just an aside – did anybody see the Nova episode on “Global Dimming”(2007?)? They showed evidence that the particulates in the air have been decreasing the amount of sunlight reaching the ground and may have been the major factor in causing droughts in Africa. As we get cleaner technology, the earth will warm up faster…so here we go (if it’s actually what’s happened) – the old double edged sword again.