Why not just accept denier and get some satisfaction in the next few t
years when I think there is a good chance the accusers will shown to be incorrect.

I think the terms we've got now are here to stay. The warmists like calling us deniers and personally I don't care. I think of myself as a global warming bandwagon denier. I deny them the right to tell me what to think.

Refuter doesn't roll off the tongue although it'd be easier type type than sceptic. The warmists have the same problem, there's no easy way to refer to them. They do try 'climate hawk' every now and then but someone should warn them it makes them sound like a bunch of wilderness idiots... oh hang on, maybe it does work.

Refuter? Change a few letters and you get Refugee.

But seriously, by your definition you need actually to refute CC. I've seen many deny it or nit-pick the science or throw rhetorical stones at scientists, but I have not come across a serious refutation that a dozen "sceptics" could agree on. But maybe I'm wrong - have a go!

Do you remember when Prime Minister John Major had a short contretemps with several MPs who wanted to change government policy regarding the EU, and he was later reported as having described them as "bastards"? The media, including the BBC, thereafter took much pleasure in referring to them as "Euro-bastards".

Setting aside the politics of that particular issue, the thought of being called a "climate-bastard" does actually appeal to me in a slightly perverse kind of way.

When discussing this with those who are convinced of Anthropogenic Climate Change/Global Warming I usually say "I'm what you refer to as a denier and here's why". Then at some point in the conversation I ask my question on where to reverse the change/warming to, usually unanswered, then the Minoan/Roman/Medieval warm periods are thrown into the conversation.

A fair number haven't associated denier with reasonable normal people they know nor the full implication of what it means. So I think that michaelhart is correct, and we can use it in a positive way.

I think Martin's arguments against GCMs and other climate models are a complete refutation of the alarmist case.

For Chandra:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/06/epic-fail-73-climate-models-vs-observations-for-tropical-tropospheric-temperature/

"So, about 95% (actually, 96.7%) of the climate models warm faster than the observations. While they said they were 95% certain that most of the warming since the 1950s was due to human greenhouse gas emissions, what they meant to say was that they are 95% sure their climate models are warming too much"

Richard Drake
I disagree, giving someone the opportunity to go and find out about the whole denier issue creates doubt in at least some minds. In a detailed discussion tell them to look at skeptical science, real climate and the like; also include BH and WUWT for balance. Why pussyfoot about, this is a serious problem and should be tackled head on. Stepping back from the argument gives the impression that you're unsure of your position (or are running home in tears*) depending on the person you're dealing with you may never get another chance to sow the seeds of scepticism.

I had a colleague who was a convinced Warmist, he was almost very sure of himself on almost everything, I never convinced him that he might be wrong or to just double check. However I found out recently when talking to an another former colleague that he and another who listened to these conversations without joining in are now firmly in the denier/ refuted/sceptic camp.

* This is nothing personal, a generalisation on how in my experience many people think.

For what they're worth, these are my thoughts. I don't think the word "denier" is going to die off by any other means than as a cause of major embarrassment for those who've a history of using it. I think that process is well under way at this time.

Labelling is something your opponents do to you, not something you generally have a choice in. It's the process of attempting to dehumanise and thus unfairly undermine those with whom you disagree. In any fair boxing match, this is the proverbial punch below the belt. It's cheating. But it's blatant cheating, so I'm all for it. ;-)

From my perspective, for as long as our opponents use the ridiculous term "denier", more and more people will recognise the inherent fallacy and consequently question the motivation of those who use it. As sceptics, we don't need to invoke our own logical fallacies and publicly question the motives of our opposition because, for as long as we're called "deniers", our opponents' motivation calls itself into question. Being called "deniers" is, ultimately, to our benefit. It's so easy for us to show how preposterous the term is, once it's been invoked.

So, on the understanding that we don't get to choose our label, my favourite alternative term for a sceptic is "heretic". I've always found the parallels between CAGWism and most western religions to be compelling. As a religious agnostic, I am quite able to find abundant similes and metaphors which are functional in discussions with CAGWers who mistakenly believe they've successfully side-stepped the religious trap by, they *think*, embracing science and, particularly, the at-times and in-places (particularly areas regarding prophecies and future warming scenarios) rather squidgy climate science.

So to the labels we assign the devout CAGWers - and these are terms I prefer to use in my head, rather than as rocks to throw, I'm not overly fond of the term "warmist", because it's imprecise. Anyone who doesn't dispute that the climate has warmed over the last 150 years can essentially be described as a warmist.

The term "alarmist" is far more accurate, can easily be justified and thus is broadly a descriptive rather than pejorative term.

I'm not averse to the selective use of "dogmatist", specifically when attempting to help a religiously devout CAGWer understand the trap they're in. I think the term "dogmatist" could increasingly be used much more broadly, as more of the climate science literature is exposed as the litany it really is, this term may become more and more useful. I'm always cautious not to use the term "dogmatist" unless referring specifically to an element of climate alarmism which I am demonstrating is founded in belief, specifically in the absence of evidence.

Obviously, terms like "warmista" are off the table because there are no good reasons to use them. We have the high ground and there's no good reason to surrender it.

Big Oil/ Not Banned Yet, your graphs, although interesting, do not really prove anything. HadCRUT4, UAH, RSS do not capture all warming and are distorted by events not accounted for by models. Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 show a corrected temperature profile that would look rather different when plotted against the models.

Chandra - thanks for the pointer to the paper. The fact remains that the models failed to predict global average temperature. It was a failure, whether the reason was because of physical effects that their creators did not (or could not) include in the models or for any other reason.

I can see that tweaking the observed data after the event and then finding that the tweaked data agrees better with the predictions might be useful in highlighting where the models need to be corrected. But it hardly seems to me to demonstrate that the models were in fact correct all along.

Processing observations, after the event, to produce the desired result is not science. It's things like that that turned me from accepting that global warming due to fossil fuel use was real and had a firm basis in physics to believing (well, you can guess the rest).

Big Oil, it is true that neither climate models nor people are able to predict ENSO. Ditto solar variability and volcanic activity. That situation seems unlikely to change. Models will continue to have to guess these forcings according to their historical averages. Even The Big Yin James's model will have to do this. In the long term that doesn't matter (assuming the average levels of these forcings don't change) to the model outcomes. In the short term it clearly means that a model that uses values for ENSO/solar/aerosol forcings that don't match those which come about is likely to project incorrect tempertures. Remember that after 2005, IPCC models are using such guessed focings.

Richard Drake
I think we're singing different hymns from the same hymn book ;-)

Martin, a failure to predict global temperatures over the long term (the purpose of the models) would indicate model failure (to me). Failure over a short period because of an inability to incorporate the unpredictable does not. As far as I'm aware the projections are still within error bounds and so by your definition the models have not yet failed.