I didn't say apologise anywhere!

Johanna, that's ok, sometimes I'm coming up with these things on the hoof slightly, so they don't come out as well-formed as they might, or they evolve over the telling.

This idea came out of an observation I have had about the people from the other side who come here to let us ignorant savages know the hip science that we don't understand. The point is that they come usually with the ignorant savage idea, that we're probably not bad, just misinformed. Once they realise we're well-informed, they tend to revert to the idea that we must be bad then, since we're either stupid or evil. Unfortunate, but that's the framework they see us through.

Part of this epiphany process - and this was most marked with BitBucket I think - was the complete surprise that we don't acknowledge that we do actually have the archetypal 'deniers' in our midst, and that in recent history, mainstream scepticism was clinging to some decidedly odd ideas. Looking dispassionately at the sceptical movement, it lurches from one 'kick-ass' paper to the next, none of which is good enough to slay the CAGW beast, many of which are later trashed, or at least diminished in the popular scientific press.

The Salby thing is a good example (recently quoted by someone as an example of this madness) - the story breaks that esteemed climate scientist has defected to our side, and his evil university withdraws tenure... woo! Everybody goes bananas for a week or so, this is the saviour! here he is! At last! And then as events unfold, the facts of the case are not entirely as they seemed at first (to be kind to him). The fact that we were wrong - even partially - about the facts is never acknowledged. We just suffer collective amnesia and move onto the next saviour. From outside, we look like flibbertigibbets, never learning from our mistakes, always lurching from one messiah to the next, always wrong, never slaying the beast, never winning.

Part of the collective amnesia is a growing 'denial' that we have ever made these mistakes. When you start denying the obvious, your whole position moves towards the ridiculous. And if someone is asking you about something they know is true, and you deny it happened, then you start to anger them. If you are trying to convince them that you are neither stupid nor evil, then lying to them is not the way to convince them.

For what it is worth, I have observed a shift in the sceptical side of the global warming debate over the last 10 years. It is not a shift that is global, but I would say that the continuum of sceptical beliefs and opinions has widened. For example, 10 years ago, no sceptical blogger had a good opinion of the global temperature indices, either based on gut feel derived from local circumstances or on the refusals of the compilers of those indices to share their data. Since the data became available and folks such as JeffId developed their own indices, with advanced statistical input from senior academics, a lot of this distrust has faded. Steve McIntyre frequently comments on Climate Audit these days that the surface temperature record is not a concern to him. Yes, there are people who are still distrustful of Hadcrut, GISS etc but I sense they are much fewer in number and less strident than they used to be, just as the number of people who challenge the existence of a GHE are fewer in number. I sense that among the sceptics, the interest has generally shifted to how much warming can we expect in the future.

When the GWPF was set up, Lawson said that he was not concerned about the science, just the policy implications of what the science tells us. For pointing out that the surface temperatures have not been rising as fast as previously, he was branded a "denier". However, this is the position to which some mainstream scientists seem to be edging – to judge by Richard Betts’s contributions to this thread.

On the alarmist blogs, James Annan has been dialling back on the value of sensitivity for some years now, while carefully retaining his credibility with the mainstream by not criticising the models to overtly. Even figures such as Connolley are pulling back on the levels of stridency. Consider this quote from his site:

Yes, of course, we will all die eventually. But not of GW. Or, more seriously, Are disaster scenarios about tipping points like ‘turning off the Gulf Stream’ and release of methane from the Arctic a cause for concern? gets:
Results from the best available climate models do not predict abrupt changes in such systems (often referred to as tipping points) in the near future. However, as warming increases, the possibilities of major abrupt change cannot be ruled out… Such high-risk changes are considered unlikely in this century, but are by definition hard to predict. Scientists are therefore continuing to study the possibility of such tipping points beyond which we risk large and abrupt changes.

However, the very first comment says:

Quiet, sane voices from the RS and NAS warn us again that the house is on fire, while most of humanity continues to argue loudly about what color to paint the kitchen or whose job it is to vacuum the carpet.

My take on this is that the alarmist and mainstream scientists are starting to withdraw from extreme positions towards what the sceptics have been thinking. However, they still have to convince the hardened activists and the Taminos of this world to go along with them. Whether or not this will lead to better quality climate science is a question still to be answered but at least the scientific input into policy-making should start to get more measured. The sad thing however is that very few governments actually enact policy based on evidence.

Good post

My take on this is that the alarmist and mainstream scientists are starting to withdraw from extreme positions towards what the sceptics have been thinking.

But the catch is that they are not allowed to admit it. And us rubbing their noses in it may not help either. As Sun Tzu said "build them a golden bridge to retreat across"

Evil? Apologise? You lot extrapolate more than a Mann on steroids.

Thanks TBYJ you’ve made the conversation move on from how it’s possible for the climate scientists who have contact with sceptics have no idea what our position is to how the general public perceive us. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head that they see us as a group somewhere in the region of the creationists and the tobacco industry deniers. While I don’t believe that this image was worked out for us in some darkened room by warmies I do believe that it’s a convenient image to label someone with if you don’t want ordinary people to listen to their arguments, and almost accidentally, it’s an image that has been honed and perfected over the last 25 years, or so.
And they are no fools our warmie fanatics, they’ve closed down any public discussions so that ordinary people (who in my experience, limited as it is, aren’t bought into future disasters) do not see reasoned debate coming from reasonable people on the sceptical side.
Of course it’s useful propaganda if an image is formed on the minds of the public that puts Nazi uniforms and jack boots on those opposing their science, so they, at least the vociferous part, have promoted this image of evil, and it follows that evil people are out to do evil. Very clever tactics when their opponents are in fact saying we don’t have to do anything very much because we can’t.
Just to make a more controversial point, as far as I’m aware creationists are not evil people. Sure they want other people to believe what they do, and aren’t supported by the science, but as far as I’m aware they’re not opposing the distribution of golden rice to prevent VAD and save 2 million children a year, nor did they oppose the use of DDT and see the resultant carnage. They simply want to believe, and everyone to agree with them, that the world was made by somebody/something in 7 days, or something like that. For the most part I’d bet they’re non-smokers too, but that’s another story. Now that’s not an idea that resonates with me personally, and I think it’s a bit daft, but I can’t get angry with them about it, they’re entitled to believe what they like because science only has three states: 1. True (for the time being at least); 2 Uncertain; False. So if we deride their claims of truth for, what to me and other people regard as False, what is it that assumes that all their other views are False?.

Before you answer that I will remind everyone to think of a scientist who spent most of his life trying to change
base metals into gold, yet gave us equations that could get men to the moon, and left a body of work almost unrivalled in scientific history. Should we reject the Laws of Motion because their progenitor believed he could turn base metals into gold, or should we look at what he’s saying about motion and decide whether he’s true, uncertain or false?

So I have no shame that the creationists are on my side (if they are, I’m taking TBYJ’s word for it) because, as far as I know they’re not evil and we’re not talking about creationism we’re talking about global warming and concomitant disasters for the human race

Agree about not rubbing noses in it, much as it's human to want to do that to your tormentors it is pointless. If your in a war the first thing you should decide is what victory will look like to you, and for me it would be breaking the stranglehold environmentalists have been given over our energy and industrial policies by this scare.

I don't doubt that 99.99% of the scientists on the warmist side of the debate believe there will be problems and being wrong isn't a sin, especially in science (and especially for me, as I remind Mrs. Geronimo daily. The 0.01% will be dealt with by history, and they know it now, so they're already suffering.

I do agree with them, we do have many creationists, or to widen the discussion... people who have arrived here in a back to front manner:

A skeptic looks at the scientific evidence for CAGW and concludes the case is not proven
A denier decides the case is not proven and then looks for any scientific evidence to support that view.

The latter is the type that believes every sensational new paper that comes along.
We have many of them here.

I've only skimmed the posts Richard, but my take was that TBYJ said that the original opposition to climate change were creationists and the tobacco industry and we shouldn't forget that. As I've pointed out much as I think creatioists are daft and the tobacco industry was evil to play down the role of cigarettes in cancer it doesn't mean then next sentence out of their minds is automatically wrong. TBYJ is saying that by the way, he's saying we have to accept that creationists and the tobacco industry are in the denier camp.

I suspect I'm getting near the time when I part company with mainstream scepticism. I've talked about about such a schism before, but although it seemed plausible at the time, it seems almost inevitable now. Science self-corrects. This is what is happening now. It took a long time, but not as long as some scientific controversies. As soon as it started to move, the stress lines weakened for me. But for others here the grim expressions hardened.

What we wanted was science to move, back towards realism and truth and empiricism. It's getting there. There is a school of thought that says that civilians shouldn't get involved with Science's self-correction, and I have a lot of sympathy with that view. Unfortunately Science intruded into civilian life with its pronouncements of imminent doom, so it served it right that civilians became nosy about its mechanisms.

There is still something rotten at the core of Climate Science, but truth will out. It has only gotten away from it because climatic timescales always meant a long falsification period. As geronimo said, those who are at fault will already be realising that history has already marked them down as fools, eventually that will manifest in early retirements, etc. There will be no climate Nuremberg for them, just the infamy of Science history textbooks. I hope they live to see it.

I am at the point now where I am farther away from most skeptics in view and outlook than I am from mainstream science. This is despite skepticism moving towards the realist position in recent years. It can only move so far, however, because its population comprises people who are not scientific, and who did not arrive where they are by a deductive process. These people will listen and argue but will ultimately reject science in the end because it is only a tool used to support an ideological view, to be discarded when it no longer suits. Very much like the eco-loons are rejecting science now it doesn't support them.

This might seem harsh, but it is rational. It's been a fun ride.

Just once, I'd love to see a post by Drake where he doesn't name-drop. And also, Mann falling into a giant tub of lime jelly.

shub, you demonstrate ably why some non-scientists have such a problem with science. They have deified it. To them science is the 'gold standard' - a methodology which should never be tampered with, its practitioners should be whiter than white and never swayed by the mean human attributes that makes ordinary life so bad. Real science, if you study its history, has never been like that. It has a long history of result falsification, senior figures prohibiting competing theories, grants being disallowed, petty rivalries, skewing of results for financial reward.... and still. It sort of works. Because eventually the stubborn authority dies or retires, the experiment is repeated and found at fault, rivals get bored. Sometimes it takes a long time.

Science is not post-hoc making up of stuff that fits well with all that's known up to yesterday

I'm sorry shub, that is one of the best definitions of what science IS that I've ever seen.