Glad you found it funny Dung, as intended. I think it's very funny, and hope others do as well. Never knew that AW had such a refined comedic instinct.

The thing is BB, that one can accept the GHE physics while still questioning the net result of the anthropogenic CO2 fraction, what with all the complicated 'forcings and feedbacks' so beloved by warmist climatologists.

Anthony's comment also illustrates that honest and even vehement differences of opinion on the science are a routine feature of our side of the debate, as opposed to the alarmists' attempts to construct a monolith that can't be questioned. That is not science. Many good scientists like Robert Brown, Jonathan Jones, Don Keiller, Judith Curry and Richard Betts (who is constrained by his circumstances as a civil servant) know that it is not scientific for CAGW to be presented as a fact when it so clearly is not.

Sometimes to get the message across to the general populace and to politicians it is simply a matter of presentation; we need to find some eminent and respected scientists who are also natural and appealing communicators of science in the mass media, someone like Richard Feynman. That is not an easy ask, as such people are rare and the biased MSM is unlikely to promote them, but I suspect it will happen sooner or later.

Rhoda, you are asking the wrong person. The blog's favorite physicist and scientist, Prof Jonathan Jones, must be the person for the job. Strange that he didn't pop up on your thread to discuss it with you all.

On seeing things vary according to the concentration of a gas, do you mean to imply that some (any) observable effect of a gas might be independent of the concentration of that gas? That really would be remarkable!

I don't really know what that is, but it sounds more like a property of a gas than an observable effect. What is the effect of any particular molecular magnetic moment and are you saying that the effect of the magnetic moment of one molecule of a gas is the same as the effect of the magnetic moment of ten (or of 100, 1000 etc) molecules of that gas?

Paul, thanks for the info about the wikis; it saves me the trouble of even looking them up. I guess the point is that unless a wiki, central database or similar is done really well and professionally, it's not worth doing at all. A high-standard wiki implies a group of expert and dedicated site-keepers, which would be preferably based in an academic institution. But where would the funding for that come from? Otherwise it could work if supervised by retired scientists and/or working ones who volunteer some of their spare time, not a very likely scenario I would think.

Conversely any amateurish and half-baked individual efforts to provide an information resource may be counterproductive and diminish the credibility of the skeptic case. As things stand I suppose the best the skeptic blogosphere can hope for is to be a source of information, controversy and ideas that are brought to the attention of the general public by people like Delingpole and Booker.

From a couple of casual conversations I've had with educated younger people at work, it seems that there is indeed an awareness that something is not right about the official line on climate change, so however the corrective info is percolating out, it is happening, encouragingly.

Martin, interesting. Are you saying that, given an instrument of sufficient sensitivity, the reading would be the same for one molecule as for many molecules of the gas? Or do these moments cancel each other out? If they don't cancel, does that imply some sort of alignment of gas molecules? That, to my naive world view, really would seem remarkable!

Chris, doesn't that failure to create a sceptic wiki tell you something? And if the public has to rely on those serial misleaders, Booker and Delingpole, they are surely in trouble.

Chris, doesn't that failure to create a sceptic wiki tell you something? And if the public has to rely on those serial misleaders, Booker and Delingpole, they are surely in trouble.

BB, all it tells me is that the resources and enthusiasm aren't available for a wiki to be developed. And a lack of enthusiasm could be related to a lack of perception of need. A wiki is just one way to make information accessible; there are various alternatives.

Your opinion about Booker and Delingpole is just that, an opinion. I don't know much about Christopher Booker's assertions about white asbestos, but on my understanding blue asbestos is biologically more hazardous; he seems to be making a point about exaggerated perceptions of risk. James Delingpole isn't everyone's cup of tea and his writing can be polemical at times, but polemicism can be an effective way of getting a message across; sometimes in a debate there is no common ground to be found if the other side is spouting nonsense.

The point I would make is that you don't have to like Booker or Delingpole, or agree with their opinions on every subject, for their opinions on AGW and related policy to still have merit. If theirs is the better evidence-based argument, it should prevail in the end.

everyone is so patient with the bucket without a brain

Chris, if I believed everything sceptics say I would have to believe that there are many thousands of climate and other scientists who support the sceptic cause. These are just the people one would expect to have the knowledge and fervour (they are angry at having to toe the line, aren't they) to create a wiki. And yet somehow they can't manage to combine their sceptical wisdom into a coherent whole, or even half. That tells me that the idea of these nameless legions of sceptic boffins is bunkum.

Delingpole is a highly accomplished self-publicist. He pushes all the right buttons for certain people but he knows nothing. I doubt he believes anything he says - its just about selling Delingpole. On Booker, "The Patron Saint of Charlatans", as Monbiot calls him, I wouldn't believe anything he writes.

Hilary, thanks very much for those links, which I was not aware of before. In particular PaulM's (I'm assuming you mean Paul Matthews) IPCC criticism is an excellent, concise and easily accessible resource, which deserves far wider promulgation. Looks like he would be ideally suited to becoming the director of an independent information resource unit (not a wiki) based at his university!

I don't think he would have described them as claimed effects.

Just because the system is noisy and difficult to measure doesn't prove that there is no change. Imagine you are in a lorry eating doughnuts on a bumpy road from Oxford to London. You are sitting on a measuring scale which is trying to weigh you to the nearest gram but because of the bumps the measurements are all over the place. By the time you reach London, there has been no conclusive determination of your weight, but the box of doughnuts is empty. Would you seriously claim not to weigh a box of doughnuts more than when you started out?

I don't know how JJ discussed measuring the effect, but I'm guessing that the reason it is "too small to be measured" is due to limitations on a practical experimental setup (practical size limits, duration limits).

Whether it is catastrophic or not is another issue from measuring the effect. Even a small effect can have a bad outcome. If you leave the bath running and the overflow pipe can take just a drip a minute less than the inflow, left long enough you will have a wet floor.

BTW, I don't think stupidity comes into it. It is more a matter of having the necessary accumulated knowledge and experience to be able to grasp what the physicist is saying. There are not many people who can explain something complicated from their profession work to a lay-person. The same problem exists in understanding climate science in general.

Rhoda,
no such thing as a stupid question, only a stupid answer (you've had a few of those)
shub
agree, an awful lot to skip without reading.

Sandy