a.m.r. puts the facts very well.

The computer models seem to be built on assumptions which are not a good fit with the observed facts.

Natural causes and various climatic cycles are not fully understood but they have been completely dismissed by those with a pre-defined agenda who have set out to prove MMGW rather than to investigate all possible factors which might influence climate.

Now that there are huge amounts of money sloshing around in these carbon trading schemes the science has been well and truly hijacked by the politicians and the con-men.

Sorry everybody - we need to start again with an completely open mindset and completely transparent data and methods debated by people without vested interests.

Michael D. Adams, your attempt to stifle open, unguarded debate by disparaging (and to some, possibly intimidating) language is noted, without surprise.

The errors, distortions, omissions and faulty arguments in the IPCC report are being examined and exposed in ever greater detail, even by such champions of AGW as the BBC and the Guardian.

How do you characterise, for example, NASA scientist Dr. Laccis's formal comment on the IPCC's AR4 Execute Summary?

"There is no scientific merit to be found in the Executive Summary. The presentation sounds like something put together by Greenpeace activists and their legal department. The points being made are made arbitrarily with legal sounding caveats without having established any foundation or basis in fact. The Executive Summary seems to be a political statement that is only designed to annoy greenhouse skeptics. Wasn’t the IPCC Assessment Report intended to be a scientific document that would merit solid backing from the climate science community – instead of forcing many climate scientists into having to agree with greenhouse skeptic criticisms that this is indeed a report with a clear and obvious political agenda. Attribution can not happen until understanding has been clearly demonstrated. Once the facts of climate change have been established and understood, attribution will become self-evident to all. The Executive Summary as it stands is beyond redemption and should simply be deleted."

You must be very anti-science, then, to take part in the intellectual fascism that is the climate debate.

The issue is not settled.

We do not have reliable records that go back far enough. We can't yet model accurately enough. Our understanding is not 100%, yet.

Yes, the current evidence and interpretation of that evidence appears to suggest that climate change is man made, but why on earth is that a reason to end the debate there and ostracise anyone who might want to investigate otherwise?

When the Sun orbited the Earth, it was a sensible interpretation of the physical world at the time. Likewise when the earth was flat. Just because we have a sensible interpretation now does not mean investigation or the debate should continue.

Debaters get branded deniers, as if they were denying the holocaust.

Research projects that appear to investigate an opposite hypothesis don't attract funding and make it off the ground.

This isn't science - this is intellectual fascism, and it is journalists like you who really fuel this divide.

So much venom! So much hate directed at Medhi Hassan that frankly I am beginning to think that prejudice could have something to do with it!
Surely not! Not from the SOO tolerant, fair-minded Great British people on this site!
Anyway, one might disagree about global warming but no one is commenting on Medhi's more general point and that is that the BBC is obsessed with "BALANCE" and that, curiously, leads it to be "UNBALANCED".
I have come to that conclusion too, when you see unsavoury, unrepresentative or plain wrong views being given time and air on the BBC just so that the impression of balance is given. This is another aspect of PC which is extremely damaging and does the exact opposite of what the BBC proclaims to be doing.
To give equal airtime to both sides of every issue cannot be right as the minority or crack pot view will automatically benefit.
The worst example of that was the refusal by the BBC to broadcast the Gaza humanitarian appeal with the excuse that it would have looked as if the BBC favoured the Palestinian side. This was plainly absurd and this decision was distorting the reality of the situation that is: the Israelis were the aggressors and the Palestinian population the victims who were in urgent need of humanitarian aid. AS it was, the BBC presented both sides as equal enemies at war, which was far from being the case.
I suppose the BBC, on similar grounds, would have refused to broadcast a humanitarian appeal on behalf of the victims of the Holocaust because it would have annoyed the German Nazi government by appearing to side with their enemies.
This is not balance, this is plain cowardice and dereliction of duty in representing the reality of world events.
There aren't always two sides to one story and the media has the duty to discriminate between right and wrong, bullies from victims, truth from lies, facts from propaganda.

I'm eagerly awaiting a.m.r's publication debunking the recent results of climate scientists in the journal Nature.

That should be "paper or papers", sorry.

'Do you want to debate with me whether the earth is flat? Or whether black people have inferior intelligence?'

That's a bit racist mate. What's your issue with black people? You'd think a leftie journalist would know better than to criticize someone based on their skin colour.

And as for rightwing bias on the BBC...you're having a laugh! Andrew Neil aside you couldn't find a more thinly veiled grouping of trots.

The Sunny Hundal piece was torn apart below the line and although it attracted a higher number of comments soon disappeared from the CIF "most commented" list, as if it had become an embarrassment.

It beggars belief that someone is actually citing it! Even repeating the absurd claim about the BBC's conservative bias. The BBC has been quite explicit in its commitment to AGW alarmism. It's only in the wake of the various scandals exposing the flaws and corruption at the heart of the so-called science that it's given any voice at all to rational doubt.

And of course "science" in this context means computer models which are programmed to predict AGW. As one weather forecaster, who's been rather more successful at forecasting the current weather than the propagandist Met Office, Piers Corbyn, says: "AGW is faith, not science." It's a faith which is undermining the very idea of science, the disinterested pursuit of truth.

Mehdi Hasan,

So.. When we are talking about science, it is now not necessary to prove a theory anymore?

Why should we even teach science in school anymore? Voila!!! We know all of the answers.

I get it…

You can't prove theories like these to people who lack even a basic knowledge of physics who only can comprehend "politicized" explanations. I.e. they can understand an argument like "AGW is wrong because Al Gore supports it", Or: "Climate was a lot warmer in the past" etc. etc.

This is the dilemma the BBC faces today: How to make programs for an increasingly dumbed down public.

Climate scepticism 'on the rise', BBC poll shows

Kappa. Yes, good to see opinion moving in the right direction. Not quite the direction you thought though is it?

And as to the subject of this delightful whimsy.

You might all like to read the comments that Sunny generated with his rant. Kept him quite busy.

Saibal, am I correct in assuming you take no issue with members of the public who accept AGW theory because of explanations like, "The polar bears are melting!", or "The graph goes UP!", or maybe "We're all gonna die!"? Please, It was the climate alarmists that first "took their science to the people" with, ahem, special emphasis on school children. It was your side that presented your narrative in an anti-intellectual manner to gain political capital. Your retreat into pompous elitism now that public opinion has turned against you is laughable and hypocritical. No, I’m no scientist but even silly, ignorant proles like me can identify the double standard.

"Global warming" is just another power elite promotion that is collapsing in front of our eyes. It is in fact dead in the water. The internet is gradually exposing all these scams.

Mehdi, it appears you have no place in the debate if you only wish to frame it as a political left/right issue.

Sunny's comments were nothing short of atrocious, he claims he doesn't even care to know about the scientific fact as he's taken it on faith.

Frankly, what is the point in listening to commentators that have not done even the basic due diligence on the matter?

To see a political left/right alignment on this as the key issue is to be a great boor.

You say you are arguing facts, but you obviously therefore do not understand what a scientific hypothesis is.

It is irrelevant to argue those points in detail, but people have misrepresented the strength of their assertions to yourself and to the public.

Skepticism is a natural function of scientific inquiry, theories must uphold under scrutiny. When a bunch of scientists have acted to not allow their work to be scrutinised by hiding data, software and methods, their theories must be questioned, and their motives for withholding information place them under severe scrutiny.

The "denialists" are often simply concerned scientists that are holding these people to account.

It has descended into a pissing contest as the withholding of basic data such as global temperature records and other such have been going on for 7 years or more.

No wonder those who ask for reproduceability have become withering and antagonistic to those climate scientists.

They are, however, performing a public service.

This is not to destroy theories, but to test them.

Well put Ducky. Who is this racist Mehdi Hasan? Someone sent me this link as a joke, and I'm not finding it funny. Are all AGW theory believers this crazy? Wow!

@Saibal

Mind sharing your credentials with us O' great arbiter of scientific discourse?

Would this be the same BBC that broadcast this Newsnight programme http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8417295.stm whose lead item was an experiment/infomercial intended to prove man made global warming is real?

That's hardly the actions of the "most pernicious climate-change-denying media outlet in the UK."

Well put Garth, you've beaten me to it and expressed my sentiments more eloquently than I could have done.

I feel it is a tragedy that such a globally significant issue as climate change has succumbed to ill though out argument from both sides; we can only lose from this situation. That climate is changing, of that there is no doubt. But from what cause is far from clear and thus, whether we should act and if so, in what way is also uncertain.

For Mr. Hasan to make a comparison between our knowledge of climate change and the structure of the Earth is facile in the extreme, and the choice of gravity as another example of unquestionable science, ironic. Gravity, like climate change, we observe as fact, but why and how, we cannot fully explain.

You have an arrogant and unscientific attitude, Mr Hasan.

Cityunslicker: Debate on Climate Change? There is none, except with Exxon funded liars and their ilk. Are you a paid cilmate-denial Hasbara Ho, or just a climate denier slut who does it for free?

Physicist Phil
06 February 2010 at 11:06

Oh the Mad Mehdi is clearly on his way to a Nobel prize for something, or other.

He clearly understands Popper and the scientific method like the back of his head.

If I recall my one scientific philosophy class, this is how it works. Show the merest hint of skepticism on any hypothesis postulated, that tangentially involves science, and that PROVES you MUST also believe the earth in flat.

It's incisive thinking, such as this, that must have been so impressive at his interview for this gig.

There are very few scientists who question the accepted radiative properties of CO2 - the greenhouse effect due to CO2 is thought to be about 1C of warming per doubling of the CO2 concentration from its pre-industrial levels. This warming is insufficient to account for the observed warming that's taken place in the 20th century.

The IPCC concedes this point, but hypothesises an 'enhanced' greenhouse effect : the increased CO2 in the atmosphere is hypothesised to cause an increase in the water vapor concentration, leading to a more powerful greenhouse effect, about 3 times more powerful than from the CO2 greenhouse effect by itself, according to the IPCC.

Unfortunately for the IPCC's hypothesis, measurements of the levels of water vapor in the atmosphere, as recorded by radiosondes and satellites, do not match the predictions of AGW theory - there's not as much water vapor as predicted.

Another flaw in the IPCC's hypothesis is that, according to the IPCC, CO2 has a long residence time in the atmosphere: pre-IPCC, the accepted conclusion regarding CO2 atmospheric lifetime was that it was about 3.5 yrs. The IPCC concluded that it was in the order of 100 years (or 1000 years, if one reads George Monbiot's columns). According to the IPCC, 25% of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere persist for over 1000 years.

Ignoring the fact that this goes against many scientific publications and lines of evidence pointing to a lifetime of about 3 years, if one were to accept the IPCC's conclusion, one is led to another contradiction the 'CO2 sink anomaly - namely that measured CO2 levels in the atmosphere are not as high as predicted by the IPCC's long CO2 residence time.

Another 'nail in the coffin' of the AGW hypothesis is that satellite measurements of incoming and outgoing radiation do not match those predicted by an increased greenhouse effect - there's far too much outgoing radiation (which the enhanced greenhouse effect is meant to block).

Any of the above, by itself, is enough to destroy the enhanced greenhouse hypothesis.

If one wanted to go further, one could examine the IPCC's conclusions regarding the Sun's effects on the Earth's climate - according to the IPCC, these have been more or less negligable. They can only reach this conclusion by ignoring a large amount of scientific literature observing the opposite.

The above is just considering the WG 1 section of the report - as has come to light recently, the WG 2 section of the report is also rife with errors. Surely Mehdi must be aware of the breaking news stories about this, and the outcry from many scientists concerning this, and other 'irregularities' in the AGW 'science'.

Yes, "Cityunslicker", debating facts (e.g. gravity?) is pointless. Do you want to debate with me whether the earth is flat? Or whether black people have inferior intelligence?

I'm completely convinced that climate change is happening and is currently being caused by human activity.

I believe that hysterical condemnations of people who raise valid questions about the methodology of the science, and the motivations of the scientists, cause more and more people to come to the belief that there is something fishy about climate change science. You start to make it look like a bloody conspiracy.

Relax. Let the deniers go on Newsnight and make no sense. People are intelligent. Public opinion is moving in the right direction. Getting over excited about the BBC's legitimate coverage of a story (climate scientists cocking things up) make you look as loony as the climtate change deniers.