Dr cool

I have had a few dreams and like most they made no logical sense but generated a deja vu experience. It was almost as though I'd had the same dream a long time beforehand. No narcotics involved either.

So then please specifically name the people whose qualifications and working experience grant them climate scientist status.

Then perhaps we have different goalposts. There are many sources of information that are available to the general public, with varying degrees of validity or accuracy, but very few speak with scientific authority. 'Real Climate' is probably the best available, although even they tend to wonder into political territory on occasions. Exactly; They provide "opinion". The entire site is a repository of evidence. They claim to be skeptical of climate skepticism, so with that objective in mind they don't ever look at cracks in the evidence, nor any evidence that runs contrary to the consensus opinion. By definition, that's confirmation bias. Of course it is, and that's why a consensus exists. No, it just means that I've taken a stance against confirmation bias in all forms, including that of propaganda or opinion parading as science. Like most people, with some science knowledge as well as confidence in science generally, I'm firmly of the view that the world is heating up slowly due to human activities, so blog sites such as SkS provide nothing really useful for me at all, unless you deem it necessary to perpetually reinforce the view that the world is warming due to greenhouse emissions and that we need to stop burning coal etc etc. That seems pointless to me though. Why do you think WUWT is so much more popular than SkS or other consensus blogs? A rhetorical question of course, because it's well documented that the scientist that resides within most of us is borne out of innate curiosity and skepticism. Sure, you can argue that WUWT is just as guilty of confirmation bias as much as most other similar climate blog, but for that inner real scientist in us, the skepticism is both enticing and welcome. So why deny it?

There's no need for evidence. SkS contributors are not climate scientists so it's expected that there will be technical errors with many of their interpretations of the science. Even a high school student wouldn't use SkS as a science reference. But mostly it's their political orientation that creates distortions in the facts presented. They are really no more or less apolitical that Watts up With That, and are nothing more than a presenter of polar opposite confirmation bias. Their motto is to be skeptical of climate skepticism, which is true, but it also makes their own positions on every issue align with a consensus narrative. Real scientists are of course skeptical by nature and seek to test and challenge science facts, but that's not how SkS operates. They're plainly just a bunch of activists looking for a cause. So yeah, they can make climate change look scary by drawing comparisons with nuclear bombs, but it's not too difficult for a high school student to work out that the millions of Hiroshima's worth of energy apparently added to the climate system is somewhat less than 0.01% of the total number of Hiroshima's that already exists. As the idiom goes, we didn't all come down in the last climate change induced shower.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.12532/abstract

Forget skeptical science as a valid science reference. It's anything but. You'll find plenty of science studies that show greater drought resistance with elevated CO2, due to reduced evapotranspiration. For what it's worth, the world is getting greener in response to atmospheric CO2. This doesn't imply that climate change is a good thing of course; In fact far from it, but there's no point being a denier of the fact that there will be upsides that operate over a specific time interval.

And yet snake handlers enjoy them. There are many who are part of that 97%, including Spencer, Christy, Curry, Happer..... By their own admissions they are very much a part of the 97% composite, and yet at the same time they're "climate misinformers", apparently. That's fine, and underlines the subjective nature of discussions like this one. I don't know and don't look for justifications See above. Perhaps but who am I to judge?

It's only as scary as you make it. Much like snakes or spiders etc. In terms of examples, for starters they have a long list of scientists they've dubbed as "climate misinformers", many of whom are still part of their 97% collective. How does that work? And there's all that nonsense about correlations between political views and conspiratorial ideation, which is nothing more than peer reviewed fake science, employed as a tool to slur those whose views on climate and politics are not aligned with those of the site's founders. It's kind of ironic that there's a large amount of energy directed towards combating the apparently global conspiracy of climate change denial. When you see sites like this one (Sks) focus mostly on attacking a person or scientist's integrity rather than the actual substance of their arguments you know that it's politics parading as science. Sadly, if the individuals who actually run that site are genuinely interested in combating climate change, they're effectively only making it more difficult for the world to reach universal consensus among voting citizens that action is very necessary as well as urgent. If I'm in a conversation with climate skeptics, and I am regularly, I don't tell them that they're delusional, or conspiratorial, or right wing nut jobs, or anything else that's equally offensive. Even without qualifications in psychology I know that doing so would only reinforce their defiant denial of my own position.

It's pretty good but it's more politics and activism than science. It's all about trying to scare people.