Because there isn't any reason for me to jump to a conclusion. For other reasons, I already have a carbon footprint and voting record almost anyone in that consensus would approve of. Is it really important that I "believe" all the things people are afraid of? I'm pretty content to leave some topics unresolved until I get more information.
I am not a fan of "believe" or dogma of any kind myself. I tend to go on likelihood. I ask myself is it more likely that the 97% are correct or the 3%?
I think Bayes theorem might be worthwhile here. Besides, going with the majority or authority as a principal is almost the definition of dogma. That's not likelihood in any rigorous sense.
When weighing up the likelihood of something it is valid to consider the opinions of experts. Dogma is believing what an authority says is incontrovertibly true. I am not saying that man made climate change is incontrovertibly true, only incontrovertibly highly likely. It is true that the view of the great majority of the experts in a field has authority, particularly in regards to science, but it is an justifiable authority, not one for example one built solely on tradition.
"Bottom line: What the 97% of climate scientists allegedly agree on is very mild and in no way justifies restricting the energy that billions need...But it gets even worse. Because it turns out that 97% didn’t even say that..."
The Forbes article describes how the "97%" value was fabricated:
"Where did most of the 97 percent come from, then? Cook had created a category called “explicit endorsement without quantification”—that is, papers in which the author, by Cook’s admission, did not say whether 1 percent or 50 percent or 100 percent of the warming was caused by man. He had also created a category called “implicit endorsement,” for papers that imply (but don’t say) that there is some man-made global warming and don’t quantify it. In other words, he created two categories that he labeled as endorsing a view that they most certainly didn’t."
"The 97 percent claim is a deliberate misrepresentation designed to intimidate the public—and numerous scientists whose papers were classified by Cook protested..."
Your source for that article is a man named Alex Epstein, who is paid by coal industry figures to advocate for a "new industrial revolution".
> In a September 11, 2018 piece at the CIP website, Epstein disclosed “proudly” that one of his industry clients was Tyler White, president of the Kentucky Coal Association. [22]
Also interesting:
> Alexander Epstein planned to release his “Energy Liberation Plan” for consideration by 2016 political candidates. According to an article by Epstein in Forbes, the Energy Liberation Plan seeks to combat “backwards energy and environmental policies that are anti-development, not anti-pollution.” He contends that we are “squandering the opportunity of a generation, through blind opposition to our three most potent sources of power: hydrocarbon energy (coal, oil, and gas), nuclear energy, and hydroelectric energy.” [15]
I am reading, and I am neither weeping nor laughing, because this is exactly what I expected to see.
If this is someone you expect to accurately represent climate science, I think you are mistaken in holding them in that regard.
As a counterpoint, here's another take on the "97%" figure, a review of the several meta-studies that have been done on climate science:
Their conclusion is that between 90 and 100% of climate science papers agree that 1) climate change is occurring and 2) it is caused by human industrial sources.
Of course, the man paid by the Kentucky Coal Association would disagree, but in this case I would defer to Upton Sinclair, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
Because that consensus is trivial. Probably 100% agree that the climate is changing which is the question people agreed on. Even so-called skeptics agree on that. It's all the other questions that have much more uncertainty and less consensus.
The use of that number is the kind of outright political manipulation that's so prevalent in this debate.
Keep in mind we aren't even talking about scientifically demonstrated conclusions, we are talking about speculated conclusions. The IPCC doesn't do any research themselves and don't check the data, its a meta-study.
What started my skepticism was when I realized they don't actually know how much human co2 emissions affect the temperature. Go try and find that number, you won't find it cause we don't know. Once I realized that and started understanding how the climate models work and saw how much interpretation and fitting and vague language was being used to obstruct the actual science, I realized that worrying about the environment was more rational. There is very very little actually demonstrated science in the climate debate it's almost entirely ideological and used by politicians to gain more power and create something to rally up voters around. In 10 years the climate catastrophism we see today will be laughed at. Just wait and see.
The scientific consensus is that climate change is happening and that it is human caused. Being "skeptic" about this is like being a flat earther. Baseless skepticism is not any better than blind faith.
Not that's not the scientific consensus but thanks for proving my point by arguing in blind faith.
The scientific consensus which EVERYONE agrees about even the so-called skeptics is that the climate is changing.
There is no consensus that it's human-caused, there are some indications that humans have an effect but you won't find any actual scientific proof of how much.
So the real question here is why you blindly believe something that you haven't even understood. You are literally just repeating the media not actually science which is a much more subtle discussion.
Actually, yeah, something like 99% of working scientists in climate-related fields agree it's human-caused. There've been a number of meta-studies about this.
If you want to know more, you can google this. It's a discussion that, if not for the fossil fuel money being pumped into stirring up controversy (also well demonstrated, also google-able), would have been settled long ago.
As a depressing parallel, there are also HIV deniers, too. There's one prominent scientist, I think the guy who invented PCR, who claims that HIV has nothing to do with AIDS, and he's got a small following. It's dwindled over the years, but he's still out there, trying to raise doubts despite the mainstream science on HIV leading to treatments and even possible cures, while his work leads to nothing.
Edited to mention: of course! There are also evolution deniers! Why does everyone dismiss them, but open their arms to skeptics of human-caused climate change? What's different about human-caused climate change and evolution?
And I don't need to google it I actually spent years looking at the material and methods. You on the other hand cause if you had you wouldn't claim things like 99% and you wouldn't actually believe consensus was science.
Not a single concrete piece of evidence for your position just claims.
Where is the scientifically demonstrated number that shows how much humans affect the climate?
"Google it".
Couldn't find it? Of course you can't cause we don't know what that number is because we haven't actually demonstrated it. Instead we are speculating that because we can't find other reasons and CO2 emissions correlate with the temperature increase then it must be that.
Yet how do you explain the 0.5 degree increase from late 1800- mid 1900 were we didn't do any significant CO2 emissions and how do you explain that the temperature haven't gotten up much more than the same 0.5 from the mid 1900?
Yes humans probably have some effect but we don't know how much.
If 100% agreed that it was humans caused that doesn't change anything unless they can scientifically demonstrate it which they can't.
All you have is namecalling. No science, no data just an attempt at bullying without anything to back you up.
I can back my beliefs up scientifically, you can't. Yet you call me the denier.
> The IPCC doesn't do any research themselves and don't check the data, its a meta-study.
The people writing the chapters are involved in doing the research. (It's not like doing that is a full-time job, mind.)
> What started my skepticism was when I realized they don't actually know how much human co2 emissions affect the temperature. Go try and find that number, you won't find it cause we don't know.
Short answer - doubling the atmospheric CO2 should lead to an increase between 1.5 and 4.5°C, though more current work I remember narrowed the range down somewhere around 2.3°C-3°C. There is a lot of work down to narrow it down further.
I understand how it works and I assume you can see the problem with this. The IPCC report is there to prove human impact on the climate it's not there to show IF humans have impact on the climate.
I remember science bloggers complaining that the recent IPCC report didn’t predict enough doom and gloom to get political results.
They may well be right, but they weren’t saying that they had reason to believe the IPCC had understated the influence carbon dioxide, methane, or some other gas has on the climate, or that predicted emissions where wrong, etc. They were complaining that the report didn’t have enough scare mongering. That’s not science, and it could easily lead to a big overcorrection in a few years.
Not really once you realize how much of the fearmongering is completely baseless.
There is literally no scientifically demonstrated consequence of climate change that we don't know how to deal with today let alone in 10-40-100 years from now.
