On 17/06/2011 14:32, Tudor Hughes wrote:
On Jun 17, 8:27 am, Paul wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jun 2011 at 22:24:34, duffel coat
wrote in uk.sci.weather :

On 16/06/2011 10:06 PM, Dawlish wrote:

You asked for an opinion. I gave you one. If you don't like it. don't
ask. This is complete BS. If it isn't; show me how.

denier

I bet I'm not the only GW sceptic who is tired the 'denier' label, with
its hidden subtext of being almost equivalent to 'holocaust denier'.
--
Paul Hyett, Cheltenham (change 'invalid83261' to 'blueyonder' to email me)

It depends what you're sceptical about. If you are saying the
earth has not got warmer then you are the equivalent of a flat-earther
and can be dismissed instantly. If, on the other hand, you are saying
that man's contribution to this warming is less significant than the
current consensus you should provide strong evidence for your view.

That seems quite reasonable to me. The scientific consensus including
the true sceptics (as opposed to deniers for hire) is that about half of
the warming since 1850 is due to changes in insolation and the rest is
due to GHG forcing which only really became significant from ~1970.

I am inclined to the view that some of the very steep rise seen in the
last three decades of the twentieth century was at least partly due to a
periodic component with a period of about 60 years (hence the small
peaks at 1940 and 1880 in HADCRUT). However we are now on the downside
of that periodic term and temperatures are still holding up.

So despite the fact that I do think AGW is both real and a potential
long term threat to civilisation I also believe that extrapolating from
the very steep rise in the 1970-2000 period exaggerates the problem.

Frankly, you are not in a position to do so. Neither am I and nor is
almost everyone else on this group; it's a very technical subject, not
a belief or philosophy. The only scepticism one can justify is to
query some of the doom-laden predictions one reads in the press
because these are nearly always made by people with little knowledge
of the subject.

Tudor Hughes, Warlingham, Surrey.

The hair shirt greens who want us living in caves are as much a part of
the problem as the fat ugly Americans and their SUVs for a dead planet.
Both extremes insist that they are right and make wild predictions.

Regards,
Martin Brown