The Church of Climate Change's Foundations are Crumbling.

What defines a debate? A debate, in my mind, is one where there are two clear sides to one argument, those in support and those in opposition, and both sides are given their chance to discuss calmly and rationally, and put forward their arguments and points. It is not a free-for-all, with people shouting others down, and 'winning' a debate relies on one side putting forward the more reliable and well-structured argument with more confidence and conviction than the other. The last time I checked, it didn't involve simply shouting down the opposition, insulting them, accusing them of evil crimes, and hysterical scaremongering.

Obviously, it seems, these traditional rules go out the window the very moment the words 'climate change' come into an argument.

In the 'debate' (I use the word very, very loosely) over climate change, those in support of the notion of man-made global warming, or Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) have used everything on the above list and more in an attempt to bombard anybody who dares to either question the theory or stand directly in opposition to it into sonic submission. For example, according to Gordon Brown (that esteemed and all-knowaledgble guru on climate change) has accused me of being a 'flat-earther', and Al Gore has stated that, by being sceptical about climate change, I am as bad as a Holocaust denier.

This actually offends me deeply. By me, of course, I mean myself as a staunch climate change sceptic. These comments are referring to me personally as well as every other climate change sceptic or denier in the world, personally, and they are deeply insulting slurs.

First, the Flat-Earthers are a geniune group of people who believe that the world is actually flat. This is clearly foolish - it is proven fact that the world is spherical. But it is Gore's comment which really stings in my mind. The Holocaust is surely one of the worst human atrocities to ever be committed by human beings in the history of this planet. Reading through the details of the various massacres, death camps, methods of torture and execution etc is enough to make anyone feel sickened and horrified that anybody could possibly commit such an awful act of mass genocide. You simply cannot deny it's existance. To do so would by myopic and biblically foolish.
Compare both of these to AGW (interesting how it's not called global warming anymore, is it?) and not only does the really insulting side of those claims come to light, but so too does the fact that trying to compare climate change to one of those two other areas is ridiculous and farcical. Firstly, as I said, it is a proven FACT that the world is flat, and it is a proven FACT that the Holocaust happened. AGW, however, is in no way at all a proven fact - far from it. It hardly takes any effort at all to start picking apart the entire theory of it - indeed, only last week did the serious science behind the theory begin to unravel, and we have a bunch of computer hackers to thank for exposing what many people had possibly suspected was happening but had no real proof. Let's just have a look through what the emails, which have been dubbed 'Climategate' (how imaginative - do we really have to just add 'gate' onto the end of words to give scandals a convinient name nowadays?), imply have been happening:
Manipulation of data to support ideas? Check.
The slow phasing out of fellow scientists who do not agree with them? Check.
And who is this 'they' that I speak of? Not just a bunch of random wannabe scientists sitting in a rusty old station in the Australian outback with outdated piles of junk for computers - only the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, one of the leading bodies and one of the loudest voices in the constant shouting on climate change. What makes this all worse, is that this oh-so-accurate data and graphs have been used to support countless IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change - Christ, there's a lot of acronyms in this blog) 'the-world-is-doomed-we're-destroying-the-planet-you-bastards' papers, speeches and reports. In other words, the very foundations of the research that most of the screaming and shouting on climate change is based on is under very real scrutiny for the very first time.
This is not just a one-off incident - although unsurprisingly, the Pro-AGW lobby are desperatly scrabbling for the biggest broom they can find to sweep this under the biggest and thickest rug they can get their hands on. This is very much the tip of an iceberg. Indeed, speaking of icebergs, another hysterical IPCC report this week saying how icebergs will melt from 500,000 square miles to just 100,000 square miles by 2035 has been rubbished by several eminant scientists; y'see, the original research concluded that it would in fact be the year 2350 when the icebergs would reach 100,000 square miles. As one scientist said, 'I am amazed they have made such a basic reading error'...hmm. Something tells me this wasn't one random bout of dyslexia. By the day now, it seems, there are more and more examples of data being fudged and graphs being exposed as farce - I'm almost expecting in the next few days to have several graphs exposed as having no data behind them at all, and being simply made by a 'scientist' drawing a straight line from the bottom left corner to the top right corner of the graph, with some random scribblings about 'C02 levels' and 'global temperatures' being scribbled on the side.

This is the debate that the Pro-AGW lobby have been refusing to have for years, and it begs a massive question: If the Pro-AGW people have been so certain on their science, their figures and their research, why have they openly refused to take on the climate change sceptics and denialists head-on in a reasoned debate? Why have they callously dismissed any opposition with no intellectual arguement? Why is it that when a study comes out revealing that nearly half of the British public are openly sceptical about climate change, with perhaps more also questioning it, our own elected politicians pretty much come on record telling the public that they are idiots who do not know better? It screams more and more every day of desperate bleating, like someone atop a soapbox screaming about doom and the apocolypse raining down upon us all.