Well said Theo, but I think that there is much deafness about!
I like the idea that another name for CAGW is a ‘worry’. Worries have a weight and an energy many orders of magnitude greater than the energy in a piece of reasoning – however clear, and robust and persuasive.
I think that’s true even for those of us that make an effort to allow reason it’s due weight. Do the demagogues of the world stand in front of the millions with little chunks of succinct reasoning? Methinks not!
And you nail it with Al Gore and his…..his what? What ammo’ did he use? pictures! Lots of big glossy pictures!……of Polar bears!……and graphs [in red] going through the roof!!
Once people have that worry in place, they can’t [usually] be reasoned out of it – because it wasn’t reason that put it there in the first place!
I think it is a great blessing that most people somehow connected with the physical world and its realities – especially climate – are reasonably immune to the kind of tub-thumping emotionalism that easily moitivates the more disconnected urban desk-sitters. And they are less prone to make a monster out of the name of a gas that they have never seen harm anyone. Thank God for people whose feet are on the ground!