| Consider this through the lens of Young Earth Creationism vs. evolution. The supporters of YEC claim their position is supported by data. I think YEC's are flat-out wrong, and the physical evidence is so highly weighted in favor of old-Earth evolution that it's fantastical that they can maintain their position. YEC's "call for an opportunity to discuss these matters in public, without being shunned". However, their positions have long since been demonstrated to be without basis. What YECs are looking for is fame, and influence, which they get by having a public debate 1) where the premise is that there is an argument, when there isn't, and 2) where people aren't permitted to call out the ridiculousness of their arguments. You say the efforts of "the 'climate change' movement look like a religion". YECs say that evolution is also a religion. Supporters of evolution have demonstrated that the YECs arguments are invalid. YECs repeat those arguments to new people, which shows they are not interested in the actual validity of those argument. Your 1972 Brown University example parallels that structure. As https://skepticalscience.com/What-1970s-science-said-about-g... points out: >> A persistent argument designed to discredit the field of climate science is that scientists predicted an ice age in the 1970s. So popular in fact that it ranks an impressive #7 in the most cited skeptic arguments. The logic goes that climate scientists got it completely wrong predicting global cooling in the 1970s (it started warming instead). Hence climate science can't be trusted about current global warming predictions. Setting aside the logical flaws of such an ad hominem argument, was there any consensus among 70s climate scientists predicting global cooling? ... while a study of the scientific consensus in the 1970s shows: >> in fact, the large majority of climate research in the 1970s predicted the Earth would warm as a consequence of CO2. Rather than climate science predicting cooling, the opposite is the case. You write "The ice age scare largely was confined to a group of scientists with a few articles popping up here and there". While the evidence is quite the opposite - from the same link: >> a 1975 Newsweek article The Cooling World that suggested cooling "may portend a drastic decline for food production ... A 1974 Times Magazine article Another Ice Age? painted a similarly bleak picture It appears that the popular press did more to raise an ice age scare than the peer-reviewed scientific press. Since you want "the rigours of the scientific method", surely you should apply that rigor to your own statements. Was the consensus of climate models of the 1970s really that of global cooling? Or are you repeating an argument long shown to be wrong? What is the basis of your understanding of the 1970s climate models? Was it a cherry-picked minority viewpoint selected by climate change denialists more interested in fame and influence than the validity of their arguments? |
Creationists are driven by religion. They may claim that evolution is also a religion but that is just playing with words and has no relation to the stand-off between those who support the climate catastrophe hypothesis and those who don't. In the former case religion was the main driver from the start, in the latter the movement got its start based on scientific studies. The current climate catastrophe hypothesis is not the first, there have been several predecessors. Some of these got some traction - the global cooling scare of the early '70s is one of these - while others languished. The religious undertone only became a factor in the current climate catastrophe hypothesis when it was picked up by mass media, celebrities, politicians and business interests who latched on to some parts of the IPCC reports and ran with it. Where the normal discourse in science, although heated, still remains open for discussion and by necessity for falsification, the non-scientific proponents of the climate catastrophe hypothesis had and have no such qualms. It is from there the claims of '97% of all scientists agree' and 'we only have 10/12/15 years left' arise, is is that group which coined the label 'climate denier'. The involvement of political groups in positions of power has made it a potentially career-limiting (or rather 'funding-limiting' but it comes down to the same thing) proposition to openly go against what is now becoming the dogma of the looming climate catastrophe.
This is not how science works. When a model has been proven to give the wrong results you adjust the model, you don't base policy on it. The models used by the IPCC have shown to overestimate warming by a large degree so they clearly are not showing the whole image. The reasons for the over-estimation can be several, most likely though is that the models don't take a limiting factors into account, cloud cover being a possible candidate. Instead of silencing those who follow the normal scientific method by falsifying a hypothesis these results should be taken into account and weighed for their validity, even when they come from a group which is ideologically opposed to yours.
Climate change is a real thing in the past and present, there is hardly anyone who denies this. Catastrophic climate change is a hypothesis. Anthropogenic catastrophic climate change is another hypothesis. The path from hypothesis to theory goes through attempted falsification, there is no other valid way. When presented with what is claimed to be a successful falsification the reaction should be to test it and when found valid lead to something like "well that is interesting, it looks like we missed something" instead of "go away heretic, we don't need your type around here". The former leads to better science, the latter to Lysenkoism.