I think few of us would argue that the number of skeptics that are out there seem to be pretty well proportional to the total number of skeptic arguments over time–and by number I mean both variety as well as the quantity of places where the same argument may be repeated.
My question is, which do you think comes first? Do you think the number of skeptic arguments (presented on blogs, youtube videos, or any other site) rises first, which causes the number of skeptics to rise?
Or is it that the number of skeptic arguments are merely just matching the demand, i.e. giving skeptics the ‘science’ to support their dislike of the topic? (The efforts of which will lead to increased traffic, and thus increased online popularity & ad revenue for the blogger/webmaster.)
Or could some sort of positive feedback mechanism be at work?
Peter: your questions are half sarcasm, and half picking some random nutjob and asking if he represents all "warmers". How do I feel? I ignore them, for the most part.
I thought of asking this for proponents as well, but I think it would be rather pointless. The scientists stated their conclusions, and the "warmists" as you call them came after. There were no "warmists" before the scientific studies came out.
So, it’s pretty clear that we "lagged". With skeptics it is a bit less clear.
Jim z: I more or less agree. The ‘initial dislike’ of AGW I mentioned probably comes, for many, from how they see it being portrayed by the ignorant folk around them–those extremist liberal, hippie, Earth First type who are unfortunately much louder than credible scientists.
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