The site I directed you to was not a political one, if that wasn't clear.

I know perfectly well that scientists can Lowellize themselves into believing what is later shown to be unsupportable by evidence, for a variety of reasons, including sheer wishful thinking. But you certainly can't expect me to accept a perspective that is influenced by ideological and political preferences either, not to mention economic interest. And don't protest too loudly at that assessment, you have no trouble accusing the bulk of the scientific community of doing precisely that.

Of course a lot of the skeptical views on human-caused global warming have ulterior motives behind them, financial, political and otherwise. You think I take the views of oil companies without a grain of salt?

What I have an amazingly hard time convincing people of is that those promoting the current wisdom also have their own axes to grind.

It's significant to me, if maybe not to anyone else, that every last solution presented for this problem under the Common Wisdom involves clampdowns on individual choice, control and penalizing of private industry and commerce, accumulation of more power by central authorities, and large-scale wealth redistribution.

That these are the exact same solutions proposed by these people for almost ANY perceived crisis in the modern world should at least raise a small amount of suspicion. I've watched this happen on various issues long before anybody had ever heard of "global warming."

Scientists can see which side of the bread is getting the butter same as anyone else. And while surely most of them will not fake results, a lot of them will tend to see, maybe not even consciously in some cases, that they don't rock the wrong boats.

To sum up: There aren't a lot of truly objective positions in this. This issue is already up to its eyebrows in ideology, and was from Day One. I have to work from that point. I point out holes in the theory on frequent occasions to show that there are holes in the theory, and that they are largely overlooked in favor of keeping the juggernaut moving.

I admit that your dogged defense of this issue has made me wonder if perhaps it is not completely settled yet, and that maybe it is premature to base expensive policy decisions on one or the other opinion on the issue.

Well put. I consider this progress, and if I can simply raise the discussion to that level of skepticism, that's all any reasonable person can ask. If our national policymakers held that same view, my work would be done.

The problem is that out there in the rest of the world, questioning the basic premise is treated almost as blasphemy. I've already given examples elsewhere of good scientists that have found themselves on the outside looking in, sometimes for holding a position that is no more radical than the one you gave above.

"Dogged defense?" Ask yourself why someone like me needs to do the equivalent of pounding on a two-ton brass bell with a sledgehammer to finally get you to a position that, in any reasonable world, would be a normal default view?