RickBradford

^^ Nothing will get done on major environmental issues, least of all climate, until the Green/Left does something to address its unshakable and quite misplaced arrogance. Their default mindset is : "If you understood the problem as well as I understand the problem, then you would agree with me and see that I am right." It simply never occurs to them that there may be more than one way to look at complex issues, because they never bother to ask. It's wrong-headed and very unhelpful, but shows no sign of changing. So nothing will get done.

Sure, it has. That's why the IPCC disappeared the Hockey Stick in 2007 and re-instated the Medieval Warm Period. The IPCC knew it couldn't afford to lose any more credibility by hanging onto a paper which had been eviscerated by several competent authorities. Even Michael Mann admitted that, when he altered the graph to show the MEP for a subsequent paper, tantamount to a kind of scientific plea-bargaining. So even the author doesn't share your confidence.

I think you may be the only person still talking publicly about the Hockey Stick. Most activists now evade the topic, or speak about it very quietly, like a prim family withdrawing to a back room to discuss poor Uncle Henry's drinking problem. Mann's paper, in all its awfulness, was published in 1998, rapidly shredded by people who had studied statistics, and finally disappeared by the IPCC itself in 2007, when they admitted the existence of the Medieval Warming Period, which Mann had sought to deny. You would be more tactful, as well as tactical, to draw a veil over the whole sorry mess, as the IPCC has done.

What was true in 2010 is still true today. That is, that Mann's original execrable paper was a downright shoddy piece of work which should never have seen the light of day, let alone be shoved onto the front page of an IPCC report. The reason it did so can only be because it said what so many people were desperate to hear.

Even schoolchildren are taught not to use Wikipedia as a source for anything. That's especially true of the climate change pages, which for a long time were effectively run by an activist called William Connolley as his personal climate crusade. Null points.

I would think that Thailand is one of the worst places to have this socio-political experiment. With all the chronic problems this country has, why elect someone purely on the basis that they have decided to change gender? The electorate's focus should be on getting the best person for the job.

And there have been a great many confirming that the 'hockey stick' is a statistical abomination which would have failed in a high-school class. Even the IPCC threw it under the bus in 2007 with their AR4 report, when they admitted the existence of the Medieval Warm Period, which Michael Mann had tried to disappear. That was a wake-up call for the scientific community. Much of the chicanery is exposed in a book called The Hockey Stick Illusion, a forensic examination which casts a bad light on Mann's science, as well as his motives. Sensible activists now avoid mentioning the hockey stick altogether....

"The deniers of climate change are cut from the same cloth as Holocaust deniers. They’ve never been to the death camps, Auschwitz and Birkenau, so what they haven’t seen does not exist." - Charles Larson, American University (2013) "...the others working to derail this critical piece of legislation will be seen as the Adolph Hitlers of our day, contributing to a holocaust vastly eclipsing the horrors of World War II." - Chad Kister, Environmental Activist (2008) "Climate deniers are less immoral than Holocaust deniers, although they are undoubtedly more dangerous." - Clive Hamilton, Charles Sturt University (2009)

"Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers." - Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe (2007) "It reminds me in some ways of the debate taking place in this country and around the world in the late 1930s - there were people - who said 'don't worry! Hitler's not real! It'll disappear!" - Bernie Sanders, (2010) "We have Holocaust deniers; we have climate change deniers. And to be honest, I don’t think there’s a great deal of difference."- Bill McGuire, University College London (2006)

"Denier" is a silly slur for several reasons. First, it is a meaningless term, which nobody has defined, and nobody wants to. Second, it has deliberate unpleasant connotations to denial of the Holocaust. Third, that kind of dismissive tribalism is of no value to solving the problems of global warming. So yes, I would say that people who throw the term around are part of the problem.

You appear to be talking to someone whose views bears no resemblance to mine whatever. The best science and economics say that extreme global warming could indeed be a problem in future, and so that's the position I stand behind. What I don't believe is: a) The problem is anything like as severe or urgent as the hysterical media tries to make out b ) Trying to shut down debate using words like "deniers" is of any use whatever in solving the problem.

That demonstrates precisely why you are part of the problem, not the solution. Reasonable people understand that CO2 can and most likely does play a role in warming the atmosphere. The significance of that role in warming, including the uncertainty in the computer models, whether the CO2/temperature relation is linear or logarithmic, the relative strength of natural climate phenomena, are all matters that should be thoroughly aired by "reasonable people." But you'd rather just throw around silly slurs like "deniers".

That's exactly the collectivist philosophy that drove the Soviet Union, Pol Pot's Cambodia and Maoist China. Kulaks vs peasants, new people versus base people, proletarian versus bourgeoisie. Well, not if you're one of the hundreds of millions of corpses piled up as a result of the philosophy you espouse. The only alternative to individualism is group identity politics, and the 20th century has demonstrated, beyond any doubt, that that is the fastest and surest road to hell on earth.