[adrianN]

Comments criticizing evolution in favor of intelligent design will also be downvoted for the same reasons. The scientific consensus is that climate change is happening, and it's caused by us. The evidence in favor of the theory is overwhelming, so you'd have to publish a pretty substantial study, not a comment on an internet forum, if you would want to sensibly argue against anthropogenic climate change without being ridiculed.

[yters]

Well, I'm glad the consensus of scientists has never been wrong. It's also helpful the scientists can tell us who the true experts are, otherwise we'd never know.

[rtp]

Who else do you suggest should inform us if not scientists?

[oldandtired]

Maybe, you can look at the evidence presented and determine for yourself what conclusions you come to. It may be that you will determine that the evidence is for anthropogenic climate change. But then again, you might determine that the evidence is for natural processes and that anthropogenic climate change is extremely minor.

It's up to you to decide how and what you will believe.

[Afterthought edit]. Many years ago, I was given the following advice:

Surround yourself with experts, but make your own decisions as you see fit. Experts are just that, specialists in a narrow field and they do not see the bigger picture. It is up to you to do that for yourself.

[adrianN]

Maybe you don't have time to study a subject for 5+ years fulltime to become sufficiently qualified to read scientific papers and assess their results.

[oldandtired]

The whole point is that you don't need to study a subject for 5+ years fulltime to become sufficiently qualified to read scientific papers and assess their results.

You just have to have enough interest to look at the data and see if it matches the conclusions reached based on the fundamentals of the theories involved.

If you reading and interest is extensive enough, you can pick up a lot of information that will help you do this.

I am not an organic chemist, but I have enough knowledge of the subject to understand if there is hand waving or actual evidence for the conclusions. This really only involves what I initially learned at school and university and what I have picked up in the intervening decades.

[yters]

What if scientists regularly engage in falsifying and otherwise manipulating their results to fit their agenda? What if the very statistical methodology they follow is open to abuse? If we are to give wholesale acceptance to anyone who is an 'official scientist,' yet they could well be corrupt, how is that epistemically responsible?

Furthermore, why must we blindly accept the status quo when there are legitimate dissenters? The very nature of scientific advance is that it overturns the status quo. Your methodology would seem to undermine scientific progress.

Finally, it is said that the mark of a true expert is the ability to boil a complex subject down to the lay level. If the layman must study fulltime for 5+ years to understand climate science results, is the field perhaps not at the necessary level of expertise?

[bigbugbag]

No need to resort to FUD, the thing you are mentioning happen and we can look at them. One such high profile example is Andrew Wakefield study published in the lancet which is the starting point for the "vaccines cause autism" controversy.

What happened is the author got caught, found guilty of professional misconduct and removed from practicing medicine while the paper was retracted. But this had consequences as a growing and vocal fringe population used this to fuel their agenda and spread misinformation against vaccines playing a role in the resurgence of contagious diseases.

But your arguing about climate change makes no sense, climate change has been happening for a while now there's no denying it field measure all points to this; sea level rises gradually, ice cap disappear, athmosphere composition changes, mass extinction of species is happening, natural disasters are increasing, etc. Instead of wasting everybody's time on minute details and discussing attribution you should focus on what can be done to minimize the consequences.

[oldandtired]

We have enough evidence of cooking the books in lots of different fields. Retraction Watch is a good site to see this.

The problem today is that there is no encouragement to investigate ideas that are different to the accepted models. Nor are this encouragement to do full scale duplications of reported results. Anomalies are only investigated if they don't appear to dispute the current consensus.

I had a recent discussion with a nuclear physicist that I admire about this and his response was to the effect that he would discourage such experiments. There was a lot more in the discussion which is not relevant here.

What we must be careful of is blindly assuming that our theories and models are correct. We have to realise that our interpretations of the results are many times based on deeply held beliefs that are not provable but are assumed to be true.

[oldandtired]

Which scientific consensus? The IPCC climate scientists with their models or the physicists, engineers, climate scientists and others who are raising the questions and the information that disputes these conclusions?

There are many who don't dispute that climate change occurs, what they say is that anthropogenic effects are, at this time, unknown and that any anthropogenic causes are minor compared to the various other causes.

Since I started taking an interest in this subject in the 1970's, the evidence of anthropogenic causes has been underwhelming.

As far as evolution and intelligent design are concerned, I have consigned both to the field of religious discussion and belief. I was an avid evolutionist until I started reading the actual results of experiments in the field. The results did not support any evolutionary model and still don't. As a result, I started to question why these scientists were pushing the wheelbarrow of the this model.

Just because someone is a scientist doesn't mean that they will completely logical and fair-minded about some model or another. Scientists are no different to any other group of people. They are people too and as such, have their own foibles and unsubstantiated beliefs.

If these scientists can demonstrate fair results then certainly we must look at those results. But the conclusions about what those results mean will depend on what an individual's starting point is. Just remember that old adage, to someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

If you are standing on scientific consensus as your "authority" then you are not acting in a manner that says you are investigating the facts as they are.

It may well be that anthropogenic causes will disrupt the planets climate in dangerous and possibly even unalterable ways. But I have yet to see any such evidence presented, nor have I seen valid questions being answered by these same anthropogenic climate change scientists. From where I stand, it appears that money still speaks louder than the facts.

[b1daly]

I agree with your point that we should consider the evidence, and conclusions, presented to us as the work product of scientists. Especially as much of the information is shaped by innumerable cognitive biases.

However, I’m fascinated that someone could realistically doubt the “theory of evolution.” For one thing, it is very much an active area of research, with new discoveries all the time. (Reading about the epigenetic aspects of hereditary traits kind of blew my mind. It turns out that animals adaptions to specific environments can influence later generations.)

So how do consign a relatively young area of research, that is making concrete contributions to science as being akin to religious belief?

The specifics, and controversies, of evolutionary theory, and it’s scientific cousins, are quite complex, and it seems rather capricious to wave it all away as if it was some cartoon theory of reality.

My own, very limited, view of the weakness of evolution as a theory, is that it can seem like a “just so theory,” almost true by tautology.

But the mechanisms of natural selection, and hereditary transfer of traits are so well established that to dismiss the lot of it strikes me as irrational.

[oldandtired]

My view was cultivated by the evidence of the experiments. The experiments exhibited certain outcomes. The conclusions by those scientists did not match the results they obtained. For me, that was the start of questioning the model in the first place.

In relation to consigning both views to the realm of religious discussion, I have found that proponents of both sides tend to dogma. I especially find that evolutionists tend to the ad hominem mode very quickly. When this occurs, I tend to the position that that person is incapable of holding a sensible discussion about the subject and is relying solely on "authority".

When the proponents of a particular theory or model will not get involved in reasoning discussions and simply wave away the question raise then yes they are in some sort of cartoon theory of reality. This applies across the board to all discussions.

I don't have a problem with natural selection nor do I have a problem with transfer of traits. What I have a problem with is the model of evolution (or its variants). Those who are proponents of the theory and model do a lot of hand-waving that does not match the evidence at hand.

In terms of active research, if you look at anyone who demonstrates odd data or finding that oppose the general evolutionary theory, they are treated as pariahs and infidels. This is a characteristic of religious thinking and does not bode well for any science.

[yters]

Most intelligent design proponents merely think undirected evolution cannot work, due to a variety of mathematical and scientific reasons. This does mean things like common descent, natural selection and heredity are false.

[oldandtired]

Most evolutionists merely think undirected evolution will work. Yet when asked for the specific chemical pathways in a general environment cannot provide these nor are they willing to accept the current challenge to discuss this.

As an aside, I used to believe in all of the fanciful notions like "black holes" and "neutron stars". But after some specific questions and subsequent investigation into what was being proposed, I doubt the existence of these entities. I have very specific reasons for doubting these entities and after attempting to discuss these reasons with those more "knowledgeable" in the subject, I am left with the same impression that this is also a matter of dogma.

But hey, each to his own.

[bigbugbag]

Can you provide some sources of your claims ? For example of the people going against IPCC conclusions, as the people I know disputing their result are actually telling based on actual measurement IPCC underestimated the situation.

Same, it would be nice if you would source some of the "many" saying anthropogenic effects are minor to other causes. Why not explicting those other causes by the way ?

Same again for the actual results from field experiments not supporting evolution, please source them so we can read it ourselves and apply the principles of making our own min that you are putting forward.

I do agree that there is a religion of science or scientism increasing with time even among scientists themselves and undermining actual science, but this existing is not enough to dismiss the theory of evolution as a religious belief.

Can you also tell us what are the unanswered valid questions you're talking about ?

Right now you're talking in very vague affirmation that are unverifiable, which means your point will be dismissed as personal opinion.