The distinction between true scepticism and denial

This does look like conspiracy stuff to me, on first reading, but again, I doubt the authors had this in mind either.

Now comes more bromide: 

In a democracy, calls for genuine debate are to be welcomed and must be taken seriously. Given that scientific issues can have far-reaching political, technological, or environmental consequences, greater involvement of the public can only be welcome and made led to better policy outcome. Who could disagree?

We are given a small example of how this has worked in practice (it is not in climate change).  

Notwithstanding the public’s entitlement to be involved in issues that are scientifically informed, scientific debates must still be conducted according to the rules of science. Arguments must be evidence-based and they are subject to peer review before they become provisionally accepted. 

Hang on there! If arguments have to be evidence-based, and the evidence doesn’t support them, what then? Do we really have to wait for good policy until the peer-review process (something that applies almost solely to academic work) has considered the matter? In the climate science arena even well-credentialled sceptical scientists have found it hard to get critical papers accepted for publication.

In the matter of disagreement, the two first-named authors "acknowledge the uncertainty in climate projections, but note that contrary to popular intuition, any uncertainty provides even greater impetus for climate mitigation". I’ve come across this line of argument before, and have to go along with ‘popular intuition’ here. If there is uncertainty about whether something needs to be done, because the evidence is weak or equivocal, it would seem strange indeed to say ‘Hah! That’s even more reason to go down my chosen path!’ I am open to persuasion, but not to this kind of assertion.

What I think is happening in this strange, muddled and evidence-free paper is a kind of explicit argument that peer review is the only way to go, if only because the blogospherical world (which the authors denounce) has very little in the way of support for the supposed consensus. By now the title of the paper has been forgotten by the authors, and we get this: 

People who deny scientific facts that they find challenging or unacceptable, by contrast, are by and large not skeptics. On the contrary, they demonstrably shy away from scientific debate by avoiding the submission of their ideas to peer review. 

One has to say, again, that peer review is for academics and is not the gold standard for science. Bad data, bad argument and self-interest are usually quickly discovered, and any proposition that results from them is usually dismissed, or at least put aside. What distinguishes ‘climate change’ is that policies like the carbon tax came before the science was properly in (it still isn’t), and for political reasons the policies remained current, despite the lack of continually corroborative scientific evidence.

Oh well, another blinkered, dodgy, peer-reviewed paper. Who let this through? Oh, I forgot to mention the Guidelines. The first, ‘Proposed Guidelines for Critical Scientific Engagement by Members of the Public’ begins with this little preamble: 

If your goal is to contribute to a scientific conversation, then you need to follow certain rules. One of those rules is that scientific arguments are conducted in the scientific peer-reviewed literature. If you are unwilling to do so, these guidelines are of little value.