[audio:http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2010/05/orr_20100509.mp3]

I recommend listening to this piece from Ockham’s Razor 9 May 2010 which is about the truly sceptical nature of science.  Basically, the President of the Australian Skeptics Society, Eran Segev, outlines importance of the skepticism within science and why many ideas that are circulating in society that pass to pass the test of true skepticism.  Not surprisingly, one of those examples explored is the issue of climate denialism:

The term ‘scientific consensus’ is often misused or misunderstood. A consensus arises when a significant majority of working scientists in the relevant field or fields, and the majority of scientific organisations in those fields, and the majority of scientific papers published in credible peer-reviewed scientific journals, all point in roughly the same direction. It does not mean a vote was held, and there is no suggestion that there are no dissenting voices or even that the consensus could not be wrong (as it most certainly can be). What it does mean is that those who are most able to judge the evidence, the experts, have largely been convinced by it.