I do think that there's been a veritable smorgasbord of insults recently, coming from both sides of the debate, but even so there is little excuse.
However, one thing that should be distinguished between are attacks on the man and then attacks on the information posted.
It does no-one harm to claim that someone's information is a load of rubbish - certainly I would not be hurt if someone claimed that the graphs I post are trash, rubbish or even an obscenity, although I would want to know why they felt so - but it potentially causes quite a lot of emotional harm and even, in this day and age when googling a prospective employee is a more normal thing to do, actual harm, particularly regarding job prospects, to insult the person themselves.
Of course, even then this is not condoning such attacks on what is posted - it is far better for all, and more conducive to intellectual debate, to refrain from insulting anything (whether it be the man or the information) and instead concentrate on actually, well, debating, the thrust and counter-thrust of evidence and hard data, preferably without the constant accusations of, essentially, 'conspiracy!' that come oh-so-often from both sides.
On that note, to those proponents to whom it applies: oil companies are not behind every bit of contrary data.
To those sceptics to whom it applies: despite what you may think, there is not a global conspiracy to raise taxes and increase control in the name of global warming. There are idiocies as politicians, collectively not the sharpest knives in the drawer, panic, but no malicious intent behind it.
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