Re your post which included; "What this thread shows beyond doubt is that there IS a healthy debate about anthropogenic global warming - contrary to the claims by Gillard, ..."
IMO what you have really identified is the process of cognitive dissonance - wherein people who are denying climate change / global warming / anthropogenic influence are being confronted by the Science.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
IMO the process for people like myself [some of whom have been immersed in the Science for 40+ years] watching others undergo cognitive dissonance is very different. IMO we are being challenged to revisit & interrogate our knowledge base & the beliefs founded on that knowledge. We are being asked to explain to deniers & to persaude them beyond any shadow of a doubt.
Now IMO that is all fine but in the end even today many people still repudiate evolution, some still think trhe earth is flat & some still believe mankind never walked on the Moon.
IMO some of us are watching deniers torture themselves & grasp at straws - a somewhat bemusing experience since IMO even if blowhards like Alan Jones won the debate that would not change the Science - as per the BOM data I published in a recent post on HC.
Eventually we will all have to move on & sceptics, deniers, laggards etc. will just have to like it or lump it. IMO the risk is that we are dragged backwards into a kind of Medieval Dark Age until the finite limits of this planet impose themselves very harshly upon us.
