If it turns up in a paper at the end and is peer reviewed, then it has some credence but before that, nada.
Feynman is rolling in his grave again...
Edit: if you downvote, explain yourself or you're a coward and a hypocrite.
"I think it's X. But I don't have any evidence yet."
If you don't have any evidence, you shouldn't be talking about it to a journalist. Who, quite predictably, is going to make a big deal out of it.
This sort of thing actively hurts the climate change cause. It's bad, and shouldn't be done.
If you need proof this kind of thing hurts the climate change cause, look at this thread, which is nearly entirely a debate over her one statement and nothing about any actual science.
To ask for rationality and the application of the scientific method results in claims of denialism and instant burying of the opinion.
That's not acceptable.
Thought experiment:
An astronomer sees a comet approaching earth, that will kill billions.
He wants to prevent those deaths.
He starts campaigning for methods to prevent that: comet deflection, shelter building, whatever.
Seems logical and humane to me.
All of which need testing first before you start waving your hands around and start saying "WE'RE GOING TO FUCKING DIE - RUN!"
Not acting is a choice as well, and everyone bears the responsibility for that too.
If we do spend the time, money, and effort to do things like reduce emissions, will we be worse off than we were? Would it not make more sense to use renewable energy resources, and save up the 'easy' sources of energy (oil, coal, etc) for other applications?
But blaming everything on climate suddenly isn't the right answer. Perhaps someone lost a ship load of PCP in the sea and they just snuffed it. And they're trying to hide that.
Another hypothesis that could be tested rather than "fuck blame it on climate so we can get some funding and get some nice new Herman Miller chairs and a new MacBook each"
And you say it is unacceptable for them to advocate doing anything?
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risks/a410777.html
Current impact risks overview is here. 50% chance of a large object would certainly be unprecedented.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0804.1126.pdf
Now, replace the comet watchers with paleoclimate researchers finding out what happened when the planet last time crossed 450 PPM (the other way around).
a) suddenly out of the blue, a Ford Transit mutates into a toaster.
b) someone is "pretty sure it is related to the impending comet impact".
c) Everyone goes YAY SCIENCE!!!
Sorry but derision is the only thing left. It's not science, it's religion.
a) suddenly out of the blue someone delivers a load of fish.
b) Some guy doesn't notice this and goes "pretty fucking sweet; I'm totally wasted on mushrooms and I reckon that bearded dude over there turned that loaf of bread into all those fish. Damn I've got the munchies."
c) HE'S THE FUCKING MESSIAH.
There is no causality chain established other than a hunch.
I do agree that some things are perhaps too easily reported or assumed to be caused by climate change when there is not much evidence to support that (yet).
Once you have found that a species is being wiped out, you could stand on the sidelines and measure its decline, watching dispassionately, knowing that you can reach a good solid conclusion about what was killing them when the last dissection is fully documented, or you could chose to interfere and try and prevent the extinction.
However, if what is killing them is well funded human activity, you do not have a hope in hell of interfering successfully without getting political.
There was a significant populist anti-relativity movement in Germany in the 1920s: http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/en/news/features/feature7
>Although they had previously played no role in German academic life, during the 1920s scores of self-proclaimed researchers alleged to have proved the theory of relativity to be scientifically incorrect. Because the arguments set out in hundreds of ensuing publications frequently rested on fundamental misunderstandings of Einstein’s new theory, their accounts have largely been ignored by traditional history of science.
>Einstein’s opponents were simply not prepared to question their own worldviews and instead sought alternative explanations for why their objections were disregarded by the academics. With time, many turned to conspiracy to account for their marginal status: plots favoring Einstein, so they imagined, explained his success and their marginalization. Having reached this point, any sort of resolution of the controversy had become impossible.
And from a review of the book ( http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1111/1111.2181.pdf )
>Nevertheless, anti-relativists were convinced that their opinions were being suppressed. Indeed, many believed that conspiracies were at work that thwarted the promotion of their ideas. The fact that for them relativity was obviously wrong, yet still so very successful, strengthened the contention that a plot was at play—and some anti-relativists were convinced that the co-conspirators were Jewish. Jews were held to dominate both the newspaper business and the new discipline of theoretical physics; they could thus easily advertize one of their own (Einstein) and his fallacious work (relativity). Gehrcke, for instance, kept emphasizing that the successes of relativity could only be explained by a state of “mass hypnosis”, brought about by excessive and one-sided reporting.
Hmm…
That the situation climate change is in. So it's not a comparable situation.