For example, it is obvious from common sense, that the amount of effort and skill expended on something does not equal the quality of usefulness of the final product. How many IT projects run by professionals run over budget and don’t deliver? How many doctors study diseases for decades without finding cures? How many products are brought to market which fail? How many architectural projects won awards for brilliance, only to be pulled down by later generations for total failure? In design fields, there are a few brilliant individuals and companies. Then the rest is mostly mediocrity. Climatology may be a science, but it looks like a terribly mediocre one, barely finding out anything useful and testable.

But I think people like Randi are in the business of having to maintain a public image of reasonableness. This means he can’t just go dismissing scientific fields willy nilly. Science as a whole has far too much credibility, and he could easily be shot down.

Unfortunately we have no problem questioning the integrity of politicians, the police, the army, and even doctors. But we still suffer from the shampoo commercial syndrome–it says “science” so it gotta be true!!

But if the unknowns have as great or greater effects as the knowns then it doesn’t take much for climate models to be wrong – especially as they consistently fail to predict the future.

We are talking about changes of fractions of a degree per century change when, as is evident from surfacestations.org, the very raw data is suspect, let alone what is done with it afterwards by a small tightly-knit group of highly-motivated scientists who refuse to show their workings.

The signal-to noise ratio is so narrow that it reminds me of people staring at patterns on a stained wall with peeling paint convinced they can see the Madonna, while others are looking at the same thing and thinking that the wall needs a coat of paint.

What is unreasonable is to look at an inherently highly variable and complex system, read the climategate emails and Harry’s ill-fated attempts to make sense of the climate models and conclude that this is any kind of dispassionate, mature. settled science.

P.S. It’s as telling as hell to me that even when it is pointed out to GISS/NASA how atrocious many of their surface stations are and how unfit for purpose, they don’t give a damn about improving them. They just juggle the figures some more!
Is that the action of scientists who want the truth, regardless of where it leads?

It is unreasonable to believe that climatology as a science is wrong about climate change.
It is unreasonable to believe that climatology as a science doesn’t have some unknowns.
If some people break either of the above reasonable stances, then those people are being irrational; it is reasonable to dismiss such voices, whether they be “rah rah” pro or against AGW.
The IPCC is part of the United Nations and is involved in politics. The political decisions about power and influence may or may not be compatible with a purely rational engineering approach to the problem of climate change. It is reasonable to question the proposed solutions being promoted by the IPCC if the IPCC is more of a political organisation than a scientific one. It is reasonable to question the IPCC Summary for Policymakers, even if the major body of the literature review itself, is largely drawn from purely scientific literature.
It is reasonable to weigh the threat of climate change against other threats for which there is also scientific evidence. It is reasonable to consider immediate threats more important than distant threats, when making political decisions about survival.

When it comes to “consensus” and powerful vested interests however your scepticism and bravery seem to desert you. Rather like Ben Goldacre you seem to think that a peer-reviewed paper or two is the end of the matter, despite what has been obvious for some time, that a peer-review is often little better than no review at all. The CRU emails should certainly have proved to the dimmest – and you are at the opposite end of the scale – that the peer review system is not only flawed but sometimes corrupt.

The higher the stakes, the more likely the corruption and the greater the incentives for group-think, ambition, wishful thinking, manipulation – conscious and unconscious – and downright greed.

There isn’t a need for an organised conspiracy of thousands – of course that is ridiculous and it does you no credit to attack that straw man.

All it needed was a relative handful of scientists (some of whom, no doubt, started out with the best of motives) who had control of all the relevant data and the increasingly desperate urge to prevent anyone else from seeing it and independently replicating it (Remember, what science is supposed to be?).

All the rest is piling in on a grand scale by numerous groups from environmentalists, to out-of-the-loop scientists desperate for a grant, to anti-capitalists, to capitalists slavering at the thought of making money out of thin air, to power-hungry politicians, to suddenly-green businesspeople with their eye on the main chance and on and on.

All these people don’t have to sit in darkened rooms together conspiring – they just each have to see what is blindingly obvious: that the current best way to achieve their incredibly varied dreams is to embrace and exploit AGW.

What most sensible people who are sceptical about AGW want is not anti-science, it is proper, rigorous science carried out as it is supposed to be – and patently isn’t in much of climate “science”. To characterise such people as engaging in “woo-woo” is not just insulting, not just wrong, but is contributing to a situation where bad science can continue to flourish in this field.

In a few years time it will have become very obvious that catastrophic climate change was catastrophically wrong, but in the meantime, trillions of dollars will have been wasted fighting a non-existent threat. At the very least, this will mean that many will have suffered and died because real problems in the real world will have been sidelined. That isn’t something I would wish to have on my conscience.

I hope one day that you will truly be a sceptic Mr Randi – not just when it’s easy to be. Every day that you bandy around terms like “denialist” is another day when you betray your intellect and your supposed admiration for the scientific method.

I do, however, agree with the last paragraph of Mr. Randi quoted in the post that other problems are far more pressing and more deserving of attention than global warming. Sounds right down the lines of Lomborg.

Personally, I grew up for a while in South Africa whilst Apartheid was still on, and I think this has left me very wary of any cultural movement—I saw a cultural environment where nobody, not even the smart educated teachers and professors, questioned the system—even when the system is obviously patently wrong. They knew the world was against them—there were sanctions after all—South African airways’ 747s were specially modified with extra fuel tanks in the nose of the plane, as they were barred from African airspace so couldn’t stop to refuel. It is not like it wasn’t common knowledge amongst whites that the world was forcibly telling them it was wrong. But you know what smart whites in South Africa would say?
“The world doesn’t understand South Africa”. That’s what they said.

Culture is a movement, a tide, an ocean pouring its waters through each individual person. You simply can’t run against the prevailing culture. You probably don’t even realise the waters that are running through your mind, appearing to you as if they are your own “well considered, individual” opinions. You can’t see those or run against them. You have to remove yourself from their influence, to gain perspective.

It left me with an odd perspective; I would today be far more inclined to trust AGW science if there wasn’t a consensus. (And actually I used to accept it all right up until people started saying “there is a consensus”.)

It isn’t that consensus makes it wrong; it just makes it harder to see if it is wrong, even if it is likely right, or wrong.

In your astonishment ‘at how carelessly the “deniers” of GW read material’, you seem to have carelessly read something into what’s been written here, or above, which is not there.

In short: who are you calling “deniers”, and what is it that you think they have denied?

Get real, people. Accept that I’ve admitted I was wrong. There’s a real world out there, we’re not in the hands of a vast conspiracy, and we should be reacting to real scientific findings. Deny it all you want, but reality won’t go away…