I may have the math but not the time (or inclination) to engage with "Dad" Peden on a point-by-point debate. But as I've mentioned in other similar threads I know several very smart people who take opposite views than I do on several of these topics. Some are willing to study the issues more deeply than I do (as I'm sure Peden does) and others, not so much but enough to have reasoned opinions.
Regarding the article: I find the presence of sniping at opponents, and extensive over-generalization or outright misrepresentations of their positions, distracting and frankly damaging to the believability of the argument. Kind of like if a lawyer wore a clown suit to trial. But when the rest of it is well developed I overlook it because frankly it makes for more fun writing (and hopefully more entertaining reading). I indulge in it myself in several of my posts, obviously, though I do try to avoid ad-hominem if I notice it in my posts. I also find the self-characterizations of being in the role of Cassandra quite off-putting. Whining about the way one is slighted or ignored by the powers-that-be has too much the flavor of a five-year-old's reaction to opposition, or a rejected teen wondering why the cool kids don't notice him but asserting he doesn't care. (Hey, was that ad-hominem?? maybe...)
There are reasons I don't accept Peden's page. He talks of growing glaciers; I've been to several of those places and there's no talk of growing glaciers, but lots about them melting. I think the detail about the sun's radiant energy in this context is a bit like false precision in statistical arguments ("58.7% of dentists recommend Crest!") since it's probably only one of a ton of other factors. The analogy to Piltdown man isn't appropriate either - the bones were always received with skepticism and never included as part of the recognized family tree in any serious sense - not like, say, the way Neanderthals are. It was a one-off outlying piece of unsupported data at best.
The part where I can't join the argument as an equal participant is when he starts talking about the analysis of the "hocky-stick" graphs, in particular when he talks about Steve McIntyre's critique. I know Mann is widely respected, I know nothing about McIntyre, but weighing reputation isn't the same as weighing the merits of their opinions.
It looks to me like Peden is at base proposing an alternative model for interpreting the available data - picking factors that he thinks are compelling and taking them to their conclusions. He's also done the important other part - showing key parts of the opposing model and explaining why he doesn't accept their validity. By the way, those steps are sadly lacking from a lot of the links that get injected into wacco threads. But to me this is where us amateurs start having to take a different tack. I'd have to leave it to Mann to refute Peden's criticisms of his data or its interpretation. For all I know, Peden's assertions about Mann's claims or the NAS's reaction to them are cherry-picked and unfair. But he makes a thorough case, offering lots of specifics that can be contested, and has the integrity to add this:
"And we might be wrong. We're pledged to good science, without any political or environmental agenda producing hasty conclusions, and this ball game is still in play. We've done an enormous amount of homework, and reached a preliminary opinion on the matter, and are intent on remaining politically independent in this regard. If we're wrong, delaying immediate action will only hasten doomsday"
I find this kind of article helpful to read just to avoid living in an echo chamber. But I'm not quite clear on what's the best way to incorporate them into wacco-type discussions. These need to be here, of course. When I alluded to link-wars earlier, I didn't just mean in the "linkreactive" sense Scott discussed. It's also that a bunch of links to pages like this aren't best responded to by a bunch of links to, say, Mann's support of his chart. These are the footnotes, but on a forum like this we're never going to follow them up by thoughtful, much less technical, analysis of Peden's outline of atmospheric physics. The parts of his page that are more manageable are the summaries, and this is where we run into a dead end. I'm unconvinced that his conclusion ("In short, there is no "climate crisis" of any kind at work on our planet") inevitably follows from his far-more-narrow earlier points, and in fact I don't think all of his points are well established (Man's contribution to Greenhouse Gasses is relatively insignificant. We didn't cause the recent Global Warming and we cannot stop it.).
But this is a compelling subject none the less, as can be seen by the number of words I and others throw at it. I find it easiest to challenge rationales that people bring to the discussion that are clearly not relevant or as well-established factually as the posters might think. It's great when people do post something that's not just a link to an opposite perspective, but is instead a link to a direct refutation of the points on a specific page. I don't see lots of those. And it might be interesting to hear why one side or the other resonates more with different posters. That's probably the most relevant to our own community. Interestingly enough, a lot of the posters of links to more thoughtful arguments (like Hotspring, here) explicitly disavow any endorsement. I do that too... maybe why we do that is in itself worth some discussion??