Will J, there most certainly is an element of that, ie. that:
‘Only the the approved believers-in/followers-of/adherents-to the so called ‘consensus’-position’ are entitled to participate in the discussion, which anyway only takes place on their home turf’ and that the consensus following from these exclusion tactics somehow prove that their belief was the correct one’
But that is really only for the most shallow-minded. The smarter among them are of course trawling the better skeptic blogs both for comments on their latest hyped publication, the errors and criticisms (sometimes ‘takedowns’ there) and prepare responses and adjust their talking points etc. At times they even claim to have found the problems themselves and ‘independently’ before they were pointed out on blogs (but made this claim first afterwards) etc. Sometimes papers were retracted after (real) skeptic blog-scrutiny, or this prompted corrections/errata/addendums.
No, I’d rather say that the ‘professional’ climate scientists shun the debate, both on (even playing field) blogs or in public venues, is just because they almost always lose the debate, both the technical one or in the public eye …
And the smarter ones amongst them know it. And after all, things (observational data, emirically based science) haven’t gotten better for the alarmist side the last decade, in addition to that almost whatever they try today as ‘explanation’ contradicts what they loudly proclaimed earlier (in the days of the ‘settled science’ when ‘the debate was over’, the one they have shunned ever since that is)
