- Its actually now just happening in front of people’s faces. Revolting heatwaves in Victoria, record temperature smashing all previous records by a massive margin, incredible heatwaves in South Australia, melting ice caps, and on and on and on.

- The delusion by the ’skeptics’ that they are some sort of truth-telling ‘put upon’ minority, when in fact the money and lobbying put into climate change denial is many many times that of the environmental groups. If this was a debate about anything else which didn’t involve a vast fossil fuel sector, it would have been sorted quickly and we would have all moved on. Its sad to see the right wing nutters get used by the fossil fuel industry to destroy the planet.

Anyone who has lived through the revolting heatwaves now hitting southern australia knows this is just a taste of whats to come. But hey, who cares, we can’t be absolutely sure so lets just keep going…..its all a big conspiracy by ‘the scientists’.

However I find i have more in common with the sceptics that I do with the religious believers like Robespierre “Rob” Hamilton who I don’t even want to share the same oxygen with.

And my understanding of Cnut, SL, was that he commanded the tide to turn in order to demonstrate the limits of his authority.

That was precisely my point. Our ability to change the weather is limited at best.

“Denial” of what? The Holocaust!?

When a religious education teacher told me my parents would go to hell unless they believed in God, that’s when I decided to ditch religion and join them in hell. Possibly that’s why I am one of only leftish people I know who belong to the skeptic camp? It’s a little lonely here by myself sometimes, although SL did point out that Martin Ferguson is also probably here with me (in a group of two).

I don’t like scare tactics about migration or refugees or Muslims or stuff of that nature either. They just make me want to reject any valid points the person might be making. I have to work hard to get over the feeling of being railroaded into a decision by fear.

Anyway, I tend to agree with SL’s proposition that we should look to mitigation as much as prevention. If there are going to be disastrous consequences, what can we do to mitigate them, and save lives? I also think we should be looking at alternative energy sources regardless of the whole climate change thing. Climate change just makes the need more pressing, but it’s clear we have to find other options.

I’m inclined to shy away from the polar absolutes in most controversial areas. Neither side is prepared to ascribe a single skerrick of merit to the other. And they won’t even allow a balanced view. I don’t believe it’s simply a matter of either for or against in the following examples but the proponents of either side tend to not tolerate ambivalence. I just don’t discuss Israel vs Palestine; Serbia vs Croatia; Greece vs Macedonia; abortion; or Essendon vs Carlton.

But where I sympathize with Hamilton and his ilk – and reject the notion of global warming activists being cultish – is that there might not be time or space for ambivalence about the threat climate change poses. So to Hamilton, who clearly believes we’re in an emergency, not being sure about climate change is little different from disbelieving in it.

And my understanding of Cnut, SL, was that he commanded the tide to turn in order to demonstrate the limits of his authority. Malcolm Turnbull would play him if they started casting the movie tomorrow.

Where I differ from most AGW proponents is in my dislike of turning environmentalism into religion (as Hamilton does) and my view that humans who think they can reverse long term weather trends are engaging in vast hubris. We need to focus on mitigation, because changing what we’ve created is a wee bit like a certain Saxon king sitting in the Thames estuary commanding the tide to go out…

I would also prefer that academic research into this area was less polarised. It seems that everyone’s in “pro” or “anti” camps. I don’t think that the East Anglia e-mails prove anything one way or the other about the veracity of climate change.

The point of the e-mails relate to oft repeated argument that there’s a strong consensus. The leaked e-mails apparently show that some scientists were excluding the opinions of those who disagreed with the consensus from refereed journals, or manipulating certain data so that it accorded with what they wanted to see. The fact that they allegedly did this suggests to me that consensus point is not as strong as it was. By the same token, I’ve seen frequent accusations from the pro climate change camp that denialist scientists also allegedly manipulate data and make it say what they want to see.

I wish they could all put the politics aside. Science is not about getting a politically expedient result (or at least, it shouldn’t be).

Although then again, as someone who works in academia, the vitriol of the leaked e-mails shouldn’t surprise me terribly much. You’ve no idea how passionate these debates can get. It was only the other day that a colleague of mine was telling me he’d been accused of being a Nazi for doubting a variety of restitutionary principles (which is simply unacceptable from my point of view, although I am broadly pro-restitution).

Getting back to the main point, I certainly don’t mind at all that you strongly disagree with my opinion. You have expressed your disagreement politely and logically. I’d only find your comment offensive if you thought I should be prevented from expressing my opinion.The twenty-million-dollar question is: do you think I should be allowed to express my opinion freely?