Thanks for your kind reply 
I didn't expect a reply I expect superstars like you have more important things to do with your work and spare time, but now that I have your attention a couple of brief points : 
  
- My email was just to register a vote to say the item was well below the normal high quality of the professional Science educators you are ..... 
  
- I could take your item or blog post and slightly alter it to talk about a witch hunt against homeopathy and I suspect you would then say the piece is ridiculous 
  
- I understand the context of the piece is in reaction to ravings on Fox News. 
Your podcast piece sounds like the kneejerk reaction of a Greenpeace fundraiser made angry and frustrated by watching Fox News and needing to vigorously defend the IPCC position. 
  
- It's a side alley issue we shouldn't waste time on : I am sure youv'e received enough 10 page emails from other people. 
I am not going to do that as I think time us better spent on fundamental issues rather than side alley issues 
We live in a time of distortion, noise and hype and if we are not careful we end up investing a lot in  side alley issues, so we build up positions we have to defend when  we need to concentrate on fundamentals and perspective we agree on. By being at the whim of shock-jocks we risk being like a squabbling family who waste time getting hot and negative about the 2% of things they disagree about instead of the 98% of things they agree on. 
  
- Climate Skeptics are a goldmine to the "real skeptic" movement - we can convert them instead  of railing against them 
  
Byeee 
  
Stew Green 
Someone who has come out of the the other side of the green activism tunnel. 
  
No reply is expected I am just drawing your attention to some points. I am sure you have things which are more more important in truth and perspective. 
(but if you have time there are more detailed points below  ...) 

  
  
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Thanks Steve I find you guilty of being human when normally superhuman 
  
As today's issues have so much "noise" and media distortion  in them  I tend to be thorough so 
I had already read your blog and had spent a couple of hours  checking the noisy SGU forums 
  
Not Compliant with Your Usual Skeptical Standards 
- My email was just to register a vote to say the item was well below the normal high quality of the professional Science educators you are ..... 
  
Was this the same Steve N  ? who 
- 1.a few months ago said the wise phrase "it's a lot easier to spread fear than truth" 
- 2. mocked quacks "there's a conspiracy against us" in 1/27/10 episode 
- 3. constantly tells us to use reason based on evidence 
- 4. knows that sign of an anti-science argument is strong emotion, name calling and the "there is a conspiracy" phrase 
- 5. knows that you don't let anti-science control the agenda 
i.e. start an item by reacting to the opinions of special interest groups. No rather you set out the science framework first and then if there is something good to react to like "evolution can't produce the eye" explain the truth 
  
( in addtion to the conficts pointed in my original comment I noticed a couple more 
- (from 3.) "hacked" "stolen" - loaded terms but no evidence to support. It could be an inside job etc. 
- (from 4.) "tobacco industry like conspiracy") 
  
* re conspiracies : there is an interesting phenomena of collective behaviour which mimics organised conspiracies in both right wing and left wing issues 
  
"On the show I really was just responding to the claim that the climategate e-mails discredit climate science, which they do not." 
  
- I could take your item or blog post and slightly alter it to talk about a witch hunt against homeopathy and I suspect you would then say the piece is ridiculous 
- starting with the Duke lacrosse case is a False Analogy just like homeopaths bringing up "well scientists used to say flight is impossible"' 
  
Good  science doesn't come from a  Reaction to "special interest groups" 
  
- I understand the context of the piece is in reaction to ravings on Fox News. 
It sounds like the kneejerk reaction of a Greenpeace fundraiser made angry and frustrated by watching Fox News and needing to vigorously defend the IPCC position. 
It was high on emotion and low on clear facts. 
(but SGU is not a Greenpeace meeting). Surely SGU holds the banner for science and science is about getting to the truth. 
  
1. I think most SGU listeners don't actually watch Fox news. 
2. Politicians and shockjocks are involved in a game - Of course a rightwing shockjock is  gonna grab every scrap of news and make the most of it. Actor presenters like Rush Limbaugh are not trying to get to the "truth", rather they tell the audience what they want to hear to maintain the advertising market. 
 same as the "other side" grab on to every scrap : one warm week, one storm, one hurricane, one polar bearon a rock and say it's incontrovertible evidence of global warming. 
3. You don't get to the truth by reacting to the opinion of "special interest groups" and letting "them" set the agenda. 
 One has to focus in on the fundamentals  not side issues that "the opposition" bring up as otherwise the debate becomes a game of wack a mole. 
4. By just being reactive the argument becomes STRAWMAN. (dealing with a sidestream not the main issues) 
5. A 1 second comment takes 5 hours to correct.  Countering someones flippant point eats away time cos properly explaining how things work in the real world does take an enormous amount of time. 
Likewise with rightwing radiostations, the 
Blogs are approriate places for opinion, but a SGUpodcast  news item should be about getting to the truth You didn't treat Climategate with  enough detachment. 
- I like the idea of Wikipedia rule that articles must be written from NPOV (a completelty Neutral Point of View so that you can't guess the writers political opinion) 
  
Side Alley Issues 
- Seeing through all the noise and disinformation  of today to get to truth and perspective  is not easy. 
 Normally SGU is a beacon towards the truth. 
  
issues are worth debating when 
1. They are fundamental : like "we have a new equation and it works" 
2. They bring up some standard principle 
Speculation is a waste of time as we can just wait for the data to come out  
  
We risk being like a squabbling family who waste time getting hot and negative about the 2% of things they disagree about instead of the 98% of things they agree on. 
  
Actually Climategate does bring up an important principle : that of the Scientific method of ethics and  the peer review process 
  
1. When scientists are saying "trust us this is the evidence", credibility is important. 
2. Concrete science trumps everything. Once someone come up with good formulas that produce models that consistantly  predict climate patterns accurately it's game over. It doesn't matter if they employed Uri Geller, fudged all the old data and refused access  to  it. 
Same as it doesn't matter if Einstein hadn't published  reams and reams of data E=MC squared stands up on it's own 
  
Like in the maths exam -  if you haven't quite go to the answer you will receive marks for your working 
  
Rallying  against people who are calling themselves skeptics is unhelpful 
  
Climate Skeptics are a goldmine to the "real skeptic" movement 
If people who are already calling themselves skeptics  are getting into reasoned debate and science. Whether you agree with  their stance or not with your guidance you can get them into being better critical thinkers, but with a "them and us" stance you risk just alienating them 
  
Irrational World 
As I said seeing past all the noise and distortion to get to the bottom of a subject in a world of shock jocks, internet forums jammed with trolls, commercialism, hippy BS 
is difficult. 
I hope to start work on The Irrational World Blog soon.