http://digg.com/d318rnj

http://truthmerchant.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/yet-another-christian-hypocrite/

Either you know absolutely nothing about the issue (in which case, shut up and go away) or you’re lying . In fact, I’m willing to bet that you’re out trolling the internet all day, trying to continue to confuse the issue with propaganda terms like “real” science, “scaremongers” and everything else you said that proves that you’re not trying to convince me I’m wrong, you’re just trying to inject a bit of doubt in my readers’ minds. This is exactly the technique I was attempting to illustrate, so thank you for helping make my point.

But I still want you to go away. This is my blog and I use it to express my opinion, it’s not a place for you to spout your nonsense. I can turn off comments altogether, but I know then you’ll say I’m violating your freedom of expression. Just express your opinion elsewhere, not here.

Second, you accuse me of “slander”. I’d hardly say I slandered McKitrick or Lomborg, I included them in a list of who I considered prominent “deniers”, and for each, linked to their Wikipedia page. I will take your point that perhaps “denier” isn’t the best word for either of them and that if I were writing that post today, I wouldn’t have included their names, even before your comment. But, in my opinion, they were both against taking any meaningful action, and according to exxonsecrets.org, they were both connected to the political groups that were the real focus of my post.

Then you say I didn’t make my point. Even on re-reading it today, I think my goal was pretty clear – non-scientists go to Google and start doing their research to decide for themselves if the whole thing is real or not. They find so much of the non-science stuff, and it’s often written such that it’s more accessible to laypeople, that they often end up making up their mind that it’s all a hoax. I’d like to help people see through the non-science.

Further, I think my conclusion is pretty clear and well-supported – these are not scientific bodies, they are political groups, united in their desire for free markets and limited government. If you need more convincing, look at the “About” page of CEI (“The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a public interest group dedicated to free enterprise and limited government. We believe that the best solutions come from people making their own choices in a free marketplace, rather than government intervention. Since it was founded by Fred L. Smith, Jr. in 1984, CEI has grown to a team of over 40 policy experts and staff.”), the Cato Institute (“The mission of the Cato Institute is to increase the understanding of public policies based on the principles of limited government, free markets, individual liberty, and peace. The Institute will use the most effective means to originate, advocate, promote, and disseminate applicable policy proposals that create free, open, and civil societies in the United States and throughout the world.”) or the Heartland Institute (“Heartland’s mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. Such solutions include parental choice in education, choice and personal responsibility in health care, market-based approaches to environmental protection, privatization of public services, and deregulation in areas where property rights and markets do a better job than government bureaucracies.”).

You say I attempt to “settle a scientific question by criticizing some of the personalities involved.” You know that’s wrong, what I attempted to do is show that the individuals and groups have political motives and are in no position to enter into a “scientific debate”. These groups are in a campaign to influence public policy by creating doubt in the minds of the public.

To top it all off, you claim that “the disagreement is about how much the temperature is likely to rise, and what to do about it.” That is either an outright lie, or you are so woefully uninformed about what the deniers call the “scientific debate” that you have no right commenting on the issue at all. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you would’ve heard about “global cooling in the 70s”, “medieval warm period”, “natural cycles”, “other planets are warming too”, etc, plus what people such as Inhofe (“greatest hoax ever”), Bachmann (“CO2 is a product of nature”) and all the rest have been saying for decades.

You even use standard propaganda tactics too, the scientists are “alarmists” and it’s only the “radicals” that ever denied global warming.

Conclusion: That statement of yours is a bold-faced lie. You and your people have lost the “debate”, and now you’re trying to re-frame it as if you’ve just been conscientious objectors all along. BULLSHIT!!! Too many people have gone on record for too long for you to pretend the question was only “how much”.

And in fact, why do you even bother coming to my tiny, insignificant corner of the internet? The inescapable conclusion is you were trolling around, looking to make a point for keeping the status quo. You’re basically a professional liar, paid to try to make reasonable-sounding objections on people’s blogs. Who knows, maybe you were the Peter Roberts who commented on May 5. I hope you stay away now.

If it is economic development that caused CO2 to go up, then it’s only logical to make economic analyses of the situation.

Most of your article fails to make a dent, because you’re mostly not accusing these people or organizations of anything, except disagreeing with you. If you are accusing Ross McKitrick or Bjorn Lomborg of anything wrong, you should come out and say so, or stop trying slander them.

With the exception of true radicals like Ban Ki-Moon on one side and Monckton on the other, the disagreement is about how much the temperature is likely to rise, and what to do about it.

The whole thrust of your article is to settle a scientific question by criticizing some of the personalities involved. Whatever that is, it isn’t science.