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> First it's global warming, then ice age, then again global warming...
Imagine a car that's lost a wheel and is careening down the highway out of control. The passenger screams "the truck behind us is gonna ram us!". Then: "we're going to faaaast, slow down!" Then it's "watch the barrier on the left, go right go right!", and then finally "watch the lightpole on the right!"
I assume you ridicule this passenger saying he doesn't even seem to know what the problem is?
> Then when they realize we have realized that they don't know what they are talking about they use vague terms as "climate change" to gaslight us into thinking they know what they are talking about.
It's impressive, really. Thousands and thousands of scientists spend their entire careers studying the physics of the atmosphere. From this they conclude, through painstaking work, backed up by data, that the atmosphere is becoming warmer – i.e. more energetic – due to human activity. The effects of this is aggrevated extremes. Hotter heatwaves. Colder cold snaps. Drier droughts. Wetter floods. And potentially (and now we're not in established science, but rather informed speculation) collapsing ocean currents that can lead to much colder temperatures in some places.
Yet you, brilliant NotGMan, you throw out all of that. You lean back, hammer your keyboard, and declare that these brilliant people "don't know what they are talking about". Unlike you, oh brilliant NotGMan, of course! _You_ know! Right?
Come on. Spare us.
All good until you understand that unless you are part of those experts (true experts, the one who never parrot anything and won't fall to ego self-tricks), you need to prefix your paragraph with "the scientific consensus brought to me by mass medias is:".
Fact is you seem very vulnerable to Gell-Mann amnesia compounded by Wikipedia "reliable sources" bias, from the way you write.
Thus, treating anyone skeptical of the complete theory of human-induced global warming (which is different from not wanting to reduce pollution, mind you) as a troglodyte who "goes against the SCIENCE^tm" isn't wise at all.
I assume you by this mean that it's not wise to treat everyone who goes against the consensus as a troglodyte. Not that everyone who does so should be exempt from being treated as a troglodyte. The latter would be pretty silly.
I'm not doing that. I'm simply pointing out that if someone goes against said consensus, they damn well be prepared to provide the evidence of why they're right. That burden does not fall on those who assume that the vast body of established science is, in fact, correct. Someone thinking that they can just armchair their way out of scientific consensus is, indeed, a troglodyte.
Sometimes, "I'm not sure" or "I don't know" is wiser than "nothing better to challenge it".
The crux of the problem in your post is the use of the words "consensus" and "established" when these can easily be manufactured (and the infamous climategate shows such social engineering, even without debating the scientific truth or untruth of the matter). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_IQ_Controversy,_the_Media_... is a very good illustration of the problem at hand (ignore the possibly loaded title, it's not what you may think)
No. I'm implying that the only reasonable reason to doubt massive amounts of data that has been, and is being, actively studied by thousands upon thousands of experts for decades, is contradicting data. Perhaps more importantly, I'm implying that armchairing an opinion on the matter carries zero weight.
> Which is what I'm objecting to, since funding and media representation in science certainly isn't favourable to this way of thinking.
Science's very imperfect funding structures do indeed cause worthwhile endeavours to go unexplored. That's sad. But irrelevant here, as it does not invalidate the conclusions from endeavours that are funded.
> Sometimes, "I'm not sure" or "I don't know" is wiser than "nothing better to challenge it".
Absolutely! For example when evidence is scant and a problem is under-studied. My problem is that you and OP seem to leap from that fact to that always being true. Climate change is not such a case, and unless you have large amounts of contradictive data, you're an idiot for saying "I don't know". And if you did have vast amounts of contradicting data, you'd bring it!
> a-french-anon 24 minutes ago | parent | context | flag | on: Is Europe headed towards a new Ice Age as ocean cu...
You're implying that the only reasonable reason to doubt data is contradicting data. Which is what I'm objecting to, since funding and media representation in science certainly isn't favourable to this way of thinking.
Sometimes, "I'm not sure" or "I don't know" is wiser than "nothing better to challenge it".
> The crux of the problem in your post is the use of the words "consensus" and "established" when these can easily be manufactured
No. You clearly have zero clue how science works.
> (and the infamous climategate shows such social engineering, even without debating the scientific truth or untruth of the matter).
?!
The vast bulk of the atmosphere is transparent to infrared radiation, it has no insulation properties at all to speak of.
The only reason our planet isn't a freezing ball is the actual insulation we do have .. and that's the 0.04% you're so flippantly and ignorantly dismissive of.
When that insulation doubles or halves it's a big deal indeed .. and yet still a tiny percentage of the atmosphere.
Try swallowing 0.04% by your body weight of a toxin and tell us how that goes .. by your "logic" that should be trivial to shrug off.
The effect of carbon dioxide on global warming has been proven a million times over. Small percentages can significantly affect heat capture from the sun. A quick overview[1].
Even at 0.1% CO2, you'll feel it (light-headedness, dizzy). Around 3-5% you'll be dead.
CO2 is rising at a rate 100x faster than pretty much ever. But you're right, its only 0.04% i'm sure we'll be fine [2]
[1] https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2019/07/30/co2-drives-glob... [2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/carbon-dioxide-levels-surging-f...