That kind of consensus is actually worrying to me. It makes it seem like there is very little effort going into ensuring that all the research the climate scientists are doing doesn't have errors.
In other words, in the echo chamber there are no critics.
Kinda like the dumb ideas that occasionally come out of SF because nobody there knows about the real problems that real people have, they just know about the trivial problems that they as single dudes in SF have.
It's important to debate and open old ideas, that's true. But as far as consensus and the News, false debate is extremely damaging. This is a false debate.
Let rejection of consensus exist where an idea is unexplored or where there is actually debate.
It's quite the same as the fact there are incredibly few biologists who think that evolution is false. The debate is simply not worth having, even though a large number of uninformed people still don't accept it.
I'm not saying that people should not discuss this. I'm saying that the debate is over unless substantial other facts are presented than we do now. Discussion value based on evidence and not conjecture. Claiming that this is the same as the dogma and falsehood of religions is plain insulting.
Besides, the last time anyone thought the world was flat was a lot longer ago than 500 years, and 'scientists' as such did not exist yet.
The thing that bugs me is that there's all this "it's CO2 stupid!!!" and a lot less "what if it were something else?"
Has the planet gotten warmer in the last 150 years? Yes.
Does that correlate with increasing CO2 concentration? Yes.
Does that prove the causal link? No.
There are about a million confounding factors that could disprove that causality. I mean there are enough man-made refrigerants in the atmosphere to literally blow a hole in the ozone layer. That's a real, proven, nobody-argues-about-it thing.
But if you look at the wikipedia refrigerants page you can see their Global Warming Potential (GWP). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_refrigerants Many of them are quite high, such that even at tiny concentrations they can have a significant impact.
That to me says that things are pretty complicated. The idea that our understanding of something that's complicated like that MIGHT not be complete isn't unreasonable.
Furthermore a lot of people say "climate change is settled, we need to do something about CO2" and I don't buy that argument. MAYBE climate change is settled, but even if it is there's a lot that can be done without even touching CO2 and all the economic pain and/or non-compliance to agreements that'll happen.
What I mean is that it might well be easier to deal with methane, NO2, and refrigerants than CO2. If it doesn't require the entire world giving up on developed country standards of living in the near future that's going to be a much easier sell. Mandating efficiency doesn't work re: jevons; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox Putting hard limits on emissions in the developed world is doable but nearly impossible in the developing world.
And even if we could get all the countries in the world to agree to hard limits on emissions, it's got to be population based, not history-based (i.e. the developed countries get larger quotas because they're already developed) or else you're basically making the undeveloped world slaves to the developed world. But even if you could somehow get the entire world to agree to such a thing, it's still terrible for one of two reasons:
1. if individuals can sell their quota on the open market fraud will be rampant since verification is impossible
2. if they can't, their governments will do so for them and we'll continue to prop up dictators all around the world
Neither is a very defensible moral position to take.
So while I'm less skeptical of climate change today than I was 10 years ago I am not 100% convinced as of yet (since complex things are complex). And all the "obvious" solutions to the problems even if I were to say "sure, it's a big enough problem we gotta do whatever we can!" end up with neutered, bad or horrible outcomes for the world. Possibly even in a worse way than if climate change continues.
EDIT: The other thing I'll mention is that we already have proven success on the trace gas emissions problem. The ozone hole should eventually close now that the problem has been solved. Rather than attacking energy (which is a multi-trillion dollar industry and affects every person on the planet) perhaps going after other sources would be more fruitful. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/ozon...
Yes, for all reasonable definitions of 'prove', the vast amount of evidence collected that is a proven fact. Although correlation of one metric does not necessarily imply causation of some other, evidence upon evidence upon evidence does imply causation. And that is what we have.
The fact that you can casually obtain this information from Wikipedia already means that the scientific community is open to, and aware of, other greenhouse gases. Your information also confirms that CO2 in itself is probably the biggest problem. It is also the one that people likely can control most in their day-to-day lives. So if that's what's driving public policy, that's probably not a bad thing either.
No, correlation does not imply causation. There are a dozen things which can correlate with rising temperatures and CO2 is only one of them. Some of them aren't even in/on the Earth!
Remember, "prove" means that ANY reliable information to the contrary overwhelms all the other evidence and/or theories because at it's core science is about falsifiability. If your theory cannot be falsified by new evidence, it's not science, it's religion.
I can't tell whether you are deliberately being dishonest or genuinely don't understand how to have a proper debate.
> Correlation does not imply causation.
You can't simply wave this around to invalidate information that does not suit your liking. You can use also use this statement to disqualify the fact that sex causes the spread of AIDS. It's a hollow statement if the evidence is overwhelming.
You can point to all other contributing factors to climate change. Yes, climate change is complex, there are many contributing factors, and not all of them are CO2. It's very important to realize, but these things are not ignored. In any case, those do not invalidate the claim that CO2 is one of the most important driving factors of current climate change, and that it is man-made.
Next you pretend that it is somehow a religion. Thirty to fifty years of gathering information, getting to know our environment and recognizing patterns in them is not a religion. That is an insult to all hard work humanity has put into this partial understanding of our world. There are thousands of ways to falsify man-made climate change (eg. CO2 increase is largest on the ocean floor, temperatures decrease over ten years, molecular nitrogen is found to be a significant greenhouse gas) none of which have any real support.
In the end you are advocating critical debate, which is fine. But don't do that by ignoring the larger discussion and only picking out the parts you like.
Denial indeed. About 50% worldwide including both public and private science. You might want to look into the source of that 97% and stop acting like you've got everything figured out.
There are 7.8 billion people on the planet, all consuming, reproducing, driving and expelling, burning, cutting, killing, clearing, digging, and searching for the American dream. The very existence of humankind is now completely outside of the natural food cycle. Most everything humans eat is farmed in numbers by weight that you or I simply can not imagine. Our economy is based on the processing and consumption of planetary resources multiplied by a rate of exponential growth. There are over 1 billion cars on the planet, and 2,300 coal power plants. 1.3 billion cows bred almost solely for human consumption, each cow eats about 4 tons of food per year. Humans are killing all the animals, burning all the fossil fuels, and toxifying all the potable water. We give back to the natural cycle; plastic garbage, VOCs, heavy metals, radioactive waste, trillions of tons of carbon bonded to oxygen. The only other organism that functions with such destruction and haste is a virus.
There is no mistake and scientists are not confused. This is the 6 major extinction the planet has ever seen in its 4.5 billion years of existence. This extinction is occurring faster than the dinosaur extinction 65 million years ago. If humans all disappeared today, it would take the planet 12 million years to repair the damage we have done. In human terms, that 12 million years longer than human existence itself.
Oh and CO2 (produced by all human action), and methane (of which cows produce tons) are greenhouse gases proven to increase temperatures of an inclosed area when IR light is applied.
> you've got everything figured out
I'm not going to pretend I don't, so you can feel better about your unfortunate unwillingness to accept the obvious and unfortunate truth.
Boy, someone's got you peeing your pants haven't they? You understand that word soup like this doesn't mean anything right? Especially when science is indeed not on your side.
Denial, is old and dead amongst the well informed. Join us.