I’m not a scientist. I wanted to be one when I grew up, but, like so many childhood ambitions, it never happened. However, my career — from which I recently retired — was in a fairly technical field that requires knowledge of many scientific principles.
I don’t recall from any of my science classes and courses anything about consensus being a part of any scientific process, unless, of course, one is referring to political science. Science is research. It’s study. It’s going to the ends of the earth and the depths of the sea to find factual information. Science is about taking what is learned and developing hypotheses and theories and proving and disproving them.
Consensus is not science.
A consensus of many scientists and others says that there is a very high probability that global warming is being caused or worsened by the activities of man.
I’ve read a lot of the material associated with their position and some of the conclusions don’t quite add up for me. For instance, carbon dioxide is supposed to be the primary contributor to global warming, yet there is no explanation why it seems to start going up after the temperature rises that it’s supposed to be causing. In my view, it’s more likely that the rise in carbon dioxide is due to gases coming out of solution as the oceans very slowly heat up, which has been occurring for many decades.
Is the climate change that is certainly occurring being caused by man or are we taking credit (blame) for something that is entirely out of our control?
Or is it just consensus?
(more to come on this topic… )
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I’m not sure what my thoughts are about this issue. I really have not read enough for and against to have make an informed opinion. I vaguely remember global cooling in the 1970’s I was very young at that time.