And then, there are the different sides of scientific discussion which produce the conclusions that the politicians warp and shriek about. Some of this is good science, and a rot of itis bad science. But whatever the politicians get to blather on about is what most people are aware of, regardless of whether it's good or bad.
And your comment points to part of the problem. It's science, so if we believe that we know everything, we're wrong. If we don't know everything, then that means we need to have the lattitude to argue about things. The argument is obviously not "is the earth warming?" but "how and why is the earth warming?". If your immediate response is "well, it's obviously humans producing CO2", then you have fallen into the trap that I'm trying to explain. Yes, humans produce CO2, and CO2 is a greenhouse gas. But the story is more complicated than that, and science needs room to wonder. The problem is the political shrieking dampens the curiosity and wonder that science is about.
In that case, it's pretty settled that there is a significant human impact on atmospheric CO2 levels; the space for room to wander are, say, the exact distribution of CO2 released. I mean, physicists don't wonder and revise basic kinematics since that science is pretty much settled that Newtonian kinematics are very good approximations of reality.
There are some facts that seem to give pause for thought though, like it apparently being much warmer than today in medieval times. This can be hard to see because temperature records don't go back that far, but we know that the Romans appeared to once grow wine near Scotland, something totally impossible today (in fact it only became possible to grow wine in the south of England very recently, a "new" thing blamed on global warming). It's unclear how the Romans could have done that unless grapes were very different or the weather was very different.
This argument is not quite up to snuff because, as it turns out, only a tiny fraction of the oil ever can be made to come out. The truth is that even after the wells have been abandoned most of the oil remains stuck in the rocks that it started in. I found this out while wondering whether or not it would be possible to burn all of the oxygen in the air (it's not, sadly ;) )
Also the oil reserves are not really running low, if they were that would be a lucky answer to carbon control.
So even if your story is true, those kids did exactly the right thing.
Regardless, the consensus that's bandied about comes from the IPC meta study of all published peer reviewed articles from climatologists; not from a few kids.
So it shouldn’t exactly surprise us that most of them agree.
> If you don't have a PhD in the field, you don't belong in the big discussions where consequences matter.
Why?
I think what we need is accountability - there should be serious negative consequences for being wrong proportional to how strongly you stand behind an idea.
Were all the climatologists who were confident we were facing global cooling driven from the industry? Stripped of their academic standing?
Then why would I trust the industry?
Counting climatologists is a bad idea because they shut critics and skeptics out of the field. We know that climate models are generally wrong. Trying saying that while having a career as a climatologist.
1. That study is 10 years old at this point. The evidence for climate change has become vastly more undeniable since then.
2. Majorities of scientists from all categories believed in climate change, even back then, according to this study.
Also, anybody who views climate prediction as intrinsically suspect pseudoscience isn’t going to want to enter the field either.
Appealing to the authority of climatologists is not going to convince anybody because everyone who thinks they are authoritative already agrees that global warming is caused by humans...