I understand you concentrate on examining the statistical work of IPCC papers, I think you said somewhere because they are the papers governments should or will use in their decision making. Do I understand you’re not concerned with examining the statistics of Lindzen and Choi critically, but you are concerned with discussing their archival standards? Or is this just a personal note, like squash scores?

Steve- there are lots of things that I’d like to have time and energy to do. Unfortunately, I do get tired.

One of the hard-to-answer arguments increasingly used Down Under is “Can you imagine the improbability of scientists word wide colluding to push false science?” Apart from scripts from PR firms, I don’t see overt collusion, but other mechanisms can give similar outcomes.

Example – when rumours sweep stock exchanges, plus old examples like tulip mania. Many investors and tulip buyers knew precious little about the subject in depth. A few specialists did, whether right or wrong, and their words were taken as encouragement to be rash. It’s not so organised, but it sure gains momentum.

The financial and political catastrophe that this artifice created will dwarf that of the South Sea Bubble. That’s South Atlantic, a surprise to many.
======

It is human culture imposing an artifice on Nature and on Human Nature. It will inevitably fail, and at great cost.
=========================

It was a classic case of experts who find that within the areas where they have detailed knowledge of the AGW issue they find the evidence wobbly and problematic, but assume it’s solid everywhere else.

I had a pretty interesting conversation recently in a social context with a woman who had just resigned, to do a masters in international politics, from a fairly senior role in one of our big departments of state which concerns itself with AGW mitigation. (One of the top three, I would think, but not DECC.)

She listened to me politely and told a mutual friend afterwards that she was impressed with my breadth of knowledge of the issue. But she couldn’t believe that all those scientists were conspiring to deceive us.

Nor are they. I wish I had a better grasp of how to communicate effectively what Ross has put so succinctly here. I found Larry Solomon’s book The Deniers useful on this. Where else is this argument about the misleading nature of the AGW consensus (because it so often involves doubts in one’s specific area of expertise) laid out in policymaker-friendly terms?

But, personally I think their timing will completely backfire, because it will just enrage those closest to the projects to see how political this became.