[rxhernandez]

> The rest of science doesn't get described so confidently

Um what? I feel like you haven't spent 10 minutes in a physics class. As someone who spent many years studying physics, you have to get within range of the quantum level before people in that field start feeling a little shaky in their beliefs.

The history of consensuses? Yes, please, you should do that, because it has gotten us quite far given the constraints of time. There are so many crackpot ideas that are thankfully rarely explored due to consensus.

[late2part]

Things that were described confidently for centuries (or less):

  1.  The earth is flat.
  2.  The sun revolves around the earth.
  3.  Fire is an element.
  4.  They have chemical/nuclear weapons.
  5.  No one can enter the search market; AltaVista owns the market.
  6.  Pets.com can't fail - look at who is invested and how big is the market.
  7.  Noone will ever need more than 640K of ram.
  8.  There is a world market for maybe 5 computers.

etc. Who cares how solid the consensus is - what matters is facts and truth.

[mrob]

Bill Gates denies making that 640K statement, and there's no clear evidence he ever said it:

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/08/640k-enough/

There's also no clear evidence that Thomas Watson ever made the world market for five computers statement:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson#Famous_attrib...

[late2part]

Congrats. You poked a hole in the meta-consensus, proving the point.

You ignore the others, that dogma leads to shallow thinking.

All the world is the blend of chaos and order; acceptance and rejection, yin and yang. Your contribution helps drive the analytical consideration of acceptance or rejection.

[ergothus]

I accept that dogma can allow wrong thoughts to persist, to drive criticism underground.

I accept that prevailing scientific/expert opinions can also be right.

I accept that the claim of climate change, if true, would have disastrous consequences on a huge number of human lives, and of course business.

I also accept that I'm not seeing people studying this field denying human caused climate change.

I am not seeing countries other that the U.S, where it has become political, denying climate change.

In fact, I see a larger number of nations in the world agree on something than ANYTHING in human history. These countries have their own scientists.

I can certainly entertain that a few countries might make false claims to push other countries to make bad investments. But you're claiming that a global conspiracy on a literally unprecedented scale is happening and that we should ignore a high consequence concept because a relatively small number of people that happen to come from the single country where it is a political issue and to a dizzying degree come from outside the field say everyone else is wrong?

I'm not a climate scientist. I've done a little digging and have my own guess as to what is likely correct, but frankly my opinion of this is low confidence because I'm so ignorant on the topic. When one side says volcanoes are orders of magnitude less greenhouse gas contributers than humanity, and the other side says the reverse, any decision I make is based other than evidence.

Using the same criteria I use to decide what OTHER scientific advice I follow, I conclude that there is a chance that counter positions to climate change are correct...but is more likely that they are wrong.

High chance of occurrence x high consequence if it happens = you need a lot more evidence than I've seen.

If the history books in 500 years talk about how humanity put forth a lot of effort to stop a calamity at a global scale that turned out to be snake oil, that is still a result preferable than about how people followed dogma that lead them to discount repeated evidence and the millions or billions of people suffered for generations. That might sound like a straw man - i could say that failing to rub my head daily would have disastrous consequences - but when paired with the likelihood that someone on the internet saw through this global hoax, it is part of my reasoning.

May I ask your profession and country of residence?

[late2part]

"But you're claiming that a global conspiracy on a literally unprecedented scale is happening"

No I'm not actually. What I'm saying is what I said. It was in reference to the ancestral post asserting that arbitrary confidence was being applied to certain statements.

[averagewall]

Scientists were widely confident about the correctness of Newton's 2nd law and the universal law of gravitation up till the late 1800s/early 1900s. Then Einstein showed their limitations/incorrectness. You can't look at contemporary modern consensuses because if it's a consensus, it'll look like it's right until the future when/if it's proven wrong.

Philosophy of science says we can't prove theories (of a certain type, which includes most of physics), only disprove them. So there aren't scientific truths, just current best theories.

Many cultures had religious myths about the history of the world which they widely believed.

I'm not saying that people who disagree with the consensus are necessarily right, or even that we should bother to listen to them - just that sometimes they might be so consensus isn't a reason to judge something as true.

[dragonwriter]

> Scientists were widely confident about the correctness of Newton's 2nd law and the universal law of gravitation up till the late 1800s/early 1900s. Then Einstein showed their limitations/incorrectness.

While Einstein revised them, the Newtonian equations are correct enough that they are still generally used for all kinds of things.

If that the best example you can use to make the argument that the current scientific consensus could be wide off the mark, you've done more to refute your argument than advance it.

[averagewall]

Bloodletting. It's honestly trivial to find examples of where science was wrong. I'm not going to research them for you if you'll make up ad-hoc reasons to reject them.

Obviously I can't give an example of current consensus being likely wrong because if I knew that, scientists would too and it wouldn't be the consensus.

Here's a snarky example though. See if you can find the flaw in it - current consensus among scientists is that you can't prove causation without doing an experiment - in particular you can't prove it using historical data. This is an obstacle to medical research since ethics impedes controlled experiments on people and it's part of why nutrition advice is frequently wrong (there you go for even more examples). But climate scientists have apparently done just that - themselves demonstrating that either the consensus is wrong or they're wrong. Either way, a consensus is wrong.

These are just an arguments to show how wrong consensus can be though - in reality I'm pretty sure that climate scientists don't acutally believe they're right without any doubt. It will be politics and attempts to manipulate people that changes confidence values into supposed certainty.

[ergothus]

Cannot prove causation is not the same as cannot conclude causation. As you point out with your medical example, we have plenty of cases where we act with evidence but not proof. Sometimes these are wrong...but more often they are not (when talking about science).

Often there is some evidence in both directions (for/against a theory), so we likewise have experience and examples where we must decide based on that imperfect info.

Given that we will never be able to prove this causation, at least not in the next few lifetimes and given that, right or wrong, the people (vast majority) in the field are saying the problem is real; Given that inaction is terrible if this is all true, then what evidence would convince you (or any example climate change denier) that the concerns are valid?

[averagewall]

My problem here isn't that I think the concerns aren't valid, but that whenever the topic comes up, multiple people start to push the agenda of "we must all take action now", as if they're trying to drum up an army of supporters, which they probably are. It gets embedded in just about any climate change related discussion, news article and even science paper.

You can't even disagree with anything related to the topic without people jumping to the conclusion that you're a climate change denier and insisting on educating you. It shuts down genuine discussion. Even evolutionist arguing creationists have managed to admit that it's just a theory, but then go on to show how strong theories can be which is perfectly righ. Climate change hasn't got to that level of honesty - people are afraid to say it's just a theory because of their agenda.

[ergothus]

I can sympathize with your position - a lot of good discussion can't happen on various topics because you have to defend against the ridiculous.

Re: GMOs - you want to discuss the impact on monocultures, chemical levels and environment impacts (good or ill), prions or other corners of proteins we don't understand, patented genes, wild release of genes (including the patented ones), the economic value in talking cost vs improved yield, or even a serious discussion about what level of labeling (if any) is reasonable? Too bad, you're going to have to deal with people that think GMO food will mutate THEM if eaten.

climate, gun control, vaccines, free speech, etc - you can't have a nuanced, serious discussion to explore details because you have to fight off the fringe(s).

OTOH, however, a higher-than-linear curve of greenhouse gas emissions and year after year, into decade after decade of inaction, has an impact. The 2 degree threshold isn't a firm line...but it's also not arbitrary. If we need to make drastic change, but we've frittered away the decades that COULD have made that more gradual, then yeah, importance of action is higher. I'm not saying we have all stop driving tomorrow...but our current pace is not what we need, so the pressure is up. If we weren't taking as many steps backwards as we are taking forward, if the models said we were closer to a target than the projection said 10 years ago, that'd allow some reduction in the pressure. Instead of saying "we just need to keep our eye on the ball" we have to say "LOOK! THERE'S A FRICKING BALL!".

So I can understand the sense of urgency. Like race relations or gender issues in tech, any complaint that people are overreacting, or that this isn't the time, or this isn't the place has to come with some believable explanation of how they see a better way that hasn't been tried and failed.

To your concluding point: Climate change is a theory. I'll admit that. It could be wrong. The overwhelming majority of those in the world with relevant data and experience can be wrong. Really. But I don't see much evidence that that is more likely than the theory being mostly correct.

With that admission, where are we? Well, we've agreed to something that was already not in question. But for most it's NOT an agreement. We have to somehow convince people that their gut instinct is not a value that should even be considered when deciding things. And again, and again.

When exactly will we STOP agreeing that it's a theory and move on to what to do with it? Will another 10 years be enough? 20?