He reckons they have delayed a proper response to global warming by several years.

The book is at the other end of the house, but I might try to find a quote tomorrow.

All of these questions are areas of legitimate debate… and that is where the legitimate debate has been occuring. Despite the alarmists wanting to delcare the debate over… many reasonable mainstream and skeptical people are having a good ol’ debate. As they should.

Given that all reasonable people know that Monibot’s four points aren’t relevant to the real debate — why did he ask them?

I’m concerned that the ABC still seems to think they have to include the denialist case to meet the requirements of their internal thought police.

On Difference of Opinion Warwick McKibbin was clearly chosen to present the denialist case, but when McMullen gave him the lead he failed to deliver.

Phillip Adams last week hosted a stoush between Bob Carter and Stephen Schneider who is Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University. We would have got a lot more value for the time spent if Adams had just interviewed Schneider.

Recently Michael Duffy at Counterpoint interviewed Emeritus Professor Garth Paltridge, another well-known denialist, with this little lead-in:

Just how pure is the science of global warming? The common assumption is that the findings funded by energy companies must be taken with a grain of salt, but is the work of a scientist who takes money from a government global warming program really any better?

The complaint was that the climate scientists were more interested in careers than science, and that you couldn’t get any funding to prove that the moon was made of cheese.

Of course Duffy and his partner in crime on the program are signed up denialists and have this little patter about the ‘carbon train’ in one of their program promos.

I expect better from our ABC.

Is his misguided mission his own, or is there a Svengali?

I would like to say it doesn’t matter, most people can see his nonsense for what it is. Unfortunately, I know many Heraldsun take at least some of his mistruths on board. I have heard comments link “It is in the paper so it must be true” Sigh.

Lovelock says that mainstream life flourishes between 25C and 35C. I think if brain work is to be done we need 18C to 26C in the shade with clothes and 3 or 4 degrees warmer if you’re in the buff (explanatory article here).

April in Brisvegas is pretty much within that optimal operating zone 24/7, which is why it’s my favourite month. But subjectively a couple of degrees do matter.

Well, if JG wants to buy me a ticket to, say, San Francisco, I might consider going somewhere…

With his first cheque from News Ltd.

Well if you’re going to desert us by “bolting” (ROFLMAO) to North Korea, it would hardly be worth it! Who would I have to piss off twice a week!?

Are you sure you would not be happier living in North Korea or Cuba?

Yes.

Perhaps your peculiar spin on “justice� might be more colourfully painted if you’d proffer a suggested replacement for the Centrelink-bound Bolt?

Why don’t you step up to the plate, John? I’m sure there’s a market for the endless repetition of the term “luvvies”.

If there’s any justice in the world, Bolt will disappear from the media in a few years!

For the life of me I cannot possibly imagine what distrurbing form of “justice” you could be tapping into. As far as I am aware, Andrew Bolt is the star columnist for Australia’s highest circulation newspaper. A non-state newspaper at that.

Perhaps your peculiar spin on “justice” might be more colourfully painted if you’d proffer a suggested replacement for the Centrelink-bound Bolt?

Are you sure you would not be happier living in North Korea or Cuba?

Are you trying to convince Andrew Bolt that global warming is actually happening? Forget it! He will still be arguing the case against global warming six feet under water. There are people in first world countries who still believe the world is flat and when you argue that people went to the moon they say ‘Oh yeah, but all that was photographed in a studio! Why aren’t there any shadows?’

Do you see what I mean? You can ask them to ask themselves all the logical questions they like, they will always cling to what they want to believe. Actually they are really very very frightened by it all, the poor things. The only way you can stop Andrew Bolt from continuing to spread his misinformation far and wide is either A) shoot him or: B) manage to get a job alongside him and put your message out there and shoot him.

Matt Price made a number of valiant attempts to say that … the vast majority of Australians DO NOT THINK THIS IS ALL RUBBISH.

I found that a very weak but interesting response. The saturation of media, both old and new, including blogging, is changing how we know the world, and overwhelming other, older, ways of knowing, with different legitimizing bases and epistemologies. The meeja, with its very limited forms of constructing expertise and legitimacy (10 minute panel discussion on tv, op-ed columns) is crowding out science and scholarship, which are disconnected from the meeja’s vague legitimizing notions of the popular, the democratic or the public interest. So for Price, as a political “journo”, what makes global warming legitimate is not (to him incomprehensible) science, but the “punters”.

Bolt, of course, uses something that looks like science to legitimize his arguments, with his graphs and figures, except it is obviously selective, wrong or misrepresentative. It’s only part of his back of tricks, though. He also deliberately positions himself again the idea of the “public” or “popular”.

However it works, the people we almost never hear from are actual scientists.

The fact is he’s backed himself so far into a corner now that NOTHING will EVER make Bolt admit there might be something to it. You might as well try to convince your pet guinea pig to listen to reason.