If you are talking about purely USA, probably war. :(
had a few email with Marc Morano, ie gestures of goodwill vs war. (political)

The emsils show how usa attitude colurs uk scientists thinking at CRU

From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.

Dung

I gues our recent discussion in another thread here must have precipitated this.

IMHO the answer to the question in the title of this discussion must be ‘both’. Intellectual discussions can take place in a war.

However, I think you have the situation over the IPCC wrong. I explain: The IPCC was established at the very least with the sanction of governments in the early days following the implosion of the red peril and replacement, on the moral high ground, of socialist virtues by green ones, and adoption of green policies. The organization has no funding of its own but relies on government controlled sources The actual but covert purpose in establishing it was to centralize the many and diverse efforts of those climate change scientists who worked to show that climate change would be catastrophic the better to enable them to furnish the governments with scientific evidence to justify their new policies However, the possibility of objections required that the published overt aim was merely to investigate climate science and provide advice. Government manipulations and the ever present threat of the withdrawal of funds have ensured that the IPCC has always pursued its covert aim while pretending to pursue its publicly advertised overt aim, in absolute accordance with what the governments want.

Of course you are right: what the IPCC says does lead to impoverishment but governments must bear the main responsibility because of the hold they have over it.

So if there is war, and I think there should be, the primary target should be government and not the IPCC, though, of course, attacks on it may also be effective.

WRT dealing with a closed mind, polite discussions may be appropriate if you think there is a possibility that it might not be so closed after all. But a good rant may be the better option if you think nothing you say will make any difference – at least it may make you feel better. In either case, however, you WILL have to take the consequences - which may be readily forecast or examples of the law of unintended consequences. And what will onlookers think and do?

Turning to sustainability, IMHO you may be right that there may be much to fear. In my book there is merit in the basic idea and this may make the outlandish generalizations that green talking heads are now spinning around it the more difficult to refute.

Geoffchambers: 'So no war, and above all no talk of war, since it makes us sound like a mirror image of the hysterical warmists.'

That would make a very interesting sound, Geoff.

I’m always slightly bemused when I read this type of comment, which features often on climate sceptic blogs; essentially: let’s not act ‘like them’. And of course this is a backhanded way of acknowledging that the person being chastised is in fact acting just ‘like them’, in this particular case, ‘hysterical’.

But as a matter of practical advice, the exhortation not to act ‘like them’ is redundant. We could equally and more directly say: stop acting hysterical; and do so without loss of meaning.

Clearly, this form of chastisement serves another function or functions. One obvious one is that it enables a poster to scold another while signalling that both belong to the same tribe.

Another could be that the exhortation not to ‘act like them’ is an indirect attack on one’s opponents: they act like that, because it’s in their nature. When we act like that, it’s a departure from our nature, an infection that we’ve caught from them.

In that case, the above statement is not at all a rejection of war, but rather of a particular type of war – an emotional one – in favour of another type of war: a moral one.

But warmists also engage in both types of war. So whether the desired war is an emotional or moral one, climate sceptics are unavoidably going to ‘sound’ like a mirror image of the warmists, or more objectively, both sides are going to sound the same.

Geoffchambers: “Thanks for the lesson.”

Thanks for your thoughts, Geoff. I wasn’t trying to impart a lesson. Nor was I being sarcastic or accusing you of hypocrisy. Perhaps I was being a bit ironic around the idea of the sound of a mirror image, although it’s quite an arresting metaphor, or maybe mixed-up metaphor.

My focus was quite narrow, on just one, not necessarily important, aspect of the climate debate, ie the exhortation for climate sceptics to not act ‘like them’.

This is just speculation really, but it’s my impression that this admonition is more prevalent on sceptic than warmer websites and blogs.

Your mention of war got me thinking about weapons, and one focus of the sceptic side is the bad behaviour of climate scientists, which leads to the question: why the focus on that?

My answer is that the focus is a potent weapon. But why that weapon? Because the warmists have the other big guns – the institutions – sewn up: academia and science, most of the media, a proportion of government and the bureaucracy, to a lesser extent business.

Against that, sceptics would want some powerful firepower, and taking the moral high ground would help with that.

Don’t think I’m trying to put you and sceptics in general under a microscope, because I’m not. Nor am I trying to excuse bad behaviour by climate scientists. But most people adjust their thinking and compensate for weaknesses in their armour.

I’m clearly still stuck on this war metaphor, which is not surprising, given the headline to this thread and your reminders. But despite what you say, I think we are in a war – a political and cultural one about what is important in life. I don’t see why that’s necessarily a bad thing, as long as it remains relatively gentlemanly and bloodless.

Re strategic aims: I don’t have any for dealing with CO2. I’m just a layperson, but anyone who thinks there’s going to be a global agreement – or even big-power agreement – on climate any time soon is dreaming. There are just too many geopolitical rivalries.

If you mean more mundane strategies, such as communication, my view is fairly simple, perhaps even simplistic. I think everybody should just try to get along. I know I do.

IMHO there is a place for polemicists like Breitbart (R.I.P.) and Delingpole to "stick it up 'em" and provoke a reaction which exposes the true nature of the enemy to impartial bystanders. The many vile comments on Delingpole's articles are a case in point - his provocations expose and shed light on the extremism of the alarmists. So the end result will presumably be that an increasing proportion of the disengaged populace will adopt a skeptical view, ultimately influencing their MPs to do the same, in their own self-interest.

That being said, there is a limit to what a frontal assault can achieve. Forcefully restating the obvious over and over can become tedious, and may antagonize the policymakers who don't want to admit that they were wrong. Pressure to change bad policy can be exerted in different ways, including more subtly via (hopefully) influential civil servants like Richard Betts.

The beauty of BH is the intelligence of the posters and their comments, which is presumably one of the reasons Richard continues to engage here. We are just as likely to change his opinions as he is ours, through reasoned discussion. His recent comments on adaptation suggest that he is moving away from CO2 mitigation, which if translated into policy change would be a big win for us.

My view is therefore to let the polemicists be polemic, and the diplomats be tactful. As long as individual skeptics value and uphold the truth, in whatever way they choose, the truth will eventually prevail. A multi-pronged approach is fine by me. It doesn't matter if most of us are aging white guys (and a few feisty gals) if we are in the right, as I believe we are. Climate change skepticism has become a massive transnational popular campaign which is utilising the power of the internet and giving a voice to those who would otherwise suffer in silence. The 'Team' may have their cause, but so have we, a cause that honours truth, common sense and dare I say a positive view of human potential.

Chris

Super post and I need someone to read it to me at bedtime ^.^

However it contains the flaw that makes me angry.

As long as individual skeptics value and uphold the truth, in whatever way they choose, the truth will eventually prevail.

That is the "feeling" of the whole blog, on virtually a daily basis we calmly discuss a new paper or a new eco policy but to what end? The blog does not have an aim other than the one quoted from your post, that if we keep going then maybe one day we will win.
I tried to point out that policies pursued by various governments are affecting people right now and I think that should add urgency to our actions and thoughts.
What we do is fight skirmishes over bits of science, win a bit here, lose a bit there but no progress.

The truth is that we are not even fighting the real war at all, the real war is pursuading scientists on both sides of the argument that whatever they know about how our climate works: what they dont know is greater by an order of magnitude. The first battle in the real war should be to get scientists to admit that they know diddly squat about our climate and that it is lunacy to spend billions on the basis of our limited knowledge.