I posted my points:

"what I find a little weird is that these new policies are, in some cases, directly opposed to the ones Labour adopted when in power - eg it was Labour who abolished the pool and who allowed, if they did not actively encourage, vertical integration in the industry. And then there are the mutually exclusive things they want to do such as encourage investment, on the one hand, while freezing retail prices and increasing wholesale prices. Have fun with that Ms Flint. The greatest one is to get rid of OFGEM and create a bigger, stronger, faster regulator....staffed by whom, exactly?"

The trouble is that the antis tend to fixate on irrelevant or un-proveable stats such as "winter deaths" (is the causation really so clear or are you reliant on meta-analyses?) or bird deaths, when the brutal reality is that heating is more expensive than it could be and that renewables are inefficient by definition, otherwise we would not have switched to coal and oil as a society 200 years ago.

Is this a comfortable place for a socialist? Denial of climate science is logical for the libertarian, free-market right, as addressing climate science requires concerted government action; because those on the right see government action as illegitimate, they must also see the science by definition as being wrong. All the arguments around the science are just a smoke screen for this basic truth. The fact that climate science denial comes predominantly from the right (ignoring the part that comes from vested interests) must confirm this to any neutral observer. But for a socialist this justification doesn't exit. Government action is at the heart of socialism. Odd then that you are able to ally yourself with those whose political views you must reject strongly.

Well said, Geoff. It still needs pointing out occasionally that more than one or two regular posters on this site don't associate themselves as historically voting for the same party as the assumed majority (usually implied as the Conservatives).

I approach from the other direction. I think I recognise truly awful politics based on as-yet unsubstantiated scientific conjecture. Whether my politics derive from the "making-the-cake-bigger", or the "dividing-the-cake-more-equitably" end of politics, I regard it as close to economic and political insanity to wilfully make the cake smaller on the basis of half-baked computer models.

Greenpeace-think states otherwise of course, but they are not, and never have been, much interested in objectivity. Their attitude to science and technology in general is best characterised as one of fear and loathing.

You misunderstand. I am not suggesting that one should take sides according to one’s politics. I am instead saying that this is what many on the right actually do. Big difference! Your "canary in the coal mine effect" is nothing of the sort. If your libertarian friends were saying "yes, AGW is true and serious and needs addressing, but the methods being taken are wrong/pointless/impractical etc", then you might have a point. But they deny the science itself. So my point stands: they dislike the necessary consequences of accepting AGW and therefore deny that it is true.

Where to start with Chandra's bizarre reasoning? I suppose it would be futile to ask Chandra to supply any evidence for his assertion that libertarians - whoever they are - "deny" climate science because they do not like the policy implications. This is drivel of a high order - possibly even more stupid than the stuff that Lewandowsky comes up with. Chandra cannot even grasp that the policies being adopted are not inevitable and that there are alternatives that would not involve closing down European industry.

Chandra thinks that pointing out the fallacies and the confusion of unverified models with reality in climatology is 'denying science'.

Why should I care if you tell them what you think. I imagine they can spot climate change cranks a mile of, so go ahead. I've made my submission, with an emphasis on efficiency improvements.

But I'm interested in your affiliation with this lot, Geoff. It can't have skipped your notice that climate science "scepticism" is a right wing preoccupation and I'm sure you've given it some thought before diving into such an unfriendly (for a socialist) pool. I can't believe that your canary in the coal mine is the sum total of your justification of this phonmenon; it is so obviously silly, as I pointed out earlier. I wouldn't expect some posters to understand this, but I'm sure you do.

If it happened to be that CO2 reduction was a good thing, why would we use a CO2 increasing measure such as windfarms to enable this? it is all so illogical. To build a windfarm requires....rare earths (mined in China at great environmental cost, but ignorable for Greenpeace purposes), concrete plinths (not exactly free from CO2 emissions). And then the maintenance costs......

How anyone other than a dunce like Chandra could imagine this would save the planet is beyond understanding. Of course, out at sea, the sea spray will degrade the plant within 3 years...and then someone has to climb a 200 foor tower at sea to carry out repairs....include me out of that!

I learned a long time ago that the best way to identify how leftie extremists think and act is to look at what they attribute to others. The shibboleth expressed here that "that's what the right / libertarians etc do" is a classic example.

It's so subconscious that I have seen some of them reduced to incoherence and disbelief when faced with someone taking positions which don't correspond to an identifiable political ideology but rather based on facts.