Are you a climatologist? If not, then Sophistry and Illusion might say that you are not qualified to judge the evidence.
Actually my post was an allegory about the upcoming Georgia-Auburn game. Ya gotta explicate it , man 
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Is this an open admission that Sophistry and Illusion is right and you are wrong?
My God! Yumblie stumbled upon the solution! Al Gore invented global warming. This is the link we’ve been overlooking all along. Therefore if he dies all GW ends and we can stop these BS threads!
Congratulations, Yumblie. You’ve just averted a major crisis (and put a burgeoning industry out of business). 
No. I stand behind what I said in post #97.
Absolutely; of course, we never had to deal with major climate change plus a human population of six billion. I’m just hoping a core of modern civilization survives.
What if we frame the issue this way:
All else being equal and lacking personal expertise it makes sense to trust the an overwhelming scientific consensus (of the sort outlined in the IPCC) on an issue of science. Agree?
So what isn’t “equal” here? What makes you doubt AGW that doesn’t also make you doubt the HIV/AIDS connection, evolution, gravity, etc.? On all of those issues there are dissenting scientists, and at least some of them call for certain political and economic change. What’s different here?
I think you underestimate the amount of intellectual division of labor that exists in science today, and overestimate the individualism involved in the production of knowledge. Perhaps if he were very smart and very dedicated a layman could master the huge array of data and the skills and techniques of a single field and be qualified to render judgments that contradict experts in that field. Maybe. But many scientific theories are supported by considerations from widely disparate fields, and are a product of researchers with different knowledge and different skills collaborating to produce a theory. It is so with AGW. It is simply inconceivable that a layperson could master all of these fields sufficiently to counter the interdisciplinary consensus and speak with any authority against this expert consensus.
And I think you underestimate the power of critical thought and common sense.
I think I estimate that we have roughly a 0% chance of coming to agreement.
Truest thing said in this thread.
I’m skeptical that the IPCC report reflects “overwhelming scientific consensus.” So I guess my answer would be “maybe.”
Actually, I was somewhat skeptical about HIV/AIDS until somebody pointed out to me that there was a big waive of blood transfusion recipients in the 1980s who ended up being HIV positive and who also died of immune system failure. Once the blood supply started being screened for HIV, the problem subsided. To me, this is a powerful piece of evidence that HIV causes AIDS. (However, if it turns out that the HIV explanation is incomplete or even wrong, I would not be terribly surprised.)
Anyway, we don’t have that sort of smoking gun evidence for AGW/CO2.
Evolution is interesting as theories go because it is so widely accepted and yet so difficult to test. Personally, I accept evolution because it makes so much sense and because there is no other reasonable explanation for what we have observed.
With AGW, we know that the Earth has gone through natural warming and cooling trends in the past. So there is a perfectly viable natural explanation for the warming trend we have seen recently.
I think it’s greater than that, if you are willing to wait 20 or 30 years.
What always puzzles me about these arguments is the logic behind any assertion that scientists would have some motivation to toe the company line (other than the available empirical evidence).
How do these people think science works? Perhaps they are coming at it from the mindset of the corporate shill, who I presume is funded for the purpose of saying things that help the corporation.
Scientists are expressly not funded if their research is aimed at doing nothing more that replicating the current beliefs of the field. (I should say that I am a social scientist, not a climate scientist, so I could be wrong about how things work over there.) An explicit criterion of any grant review is how novel or useful the findings will be. They may do nothing but test (seemingly) subtle hypotheses about how current constructs are believed to work, but each one has to have the promise of some advancement upon what is known.
I find that other researchers in my field respond most readily to findings that slightly challenge what is currently known, if it makes some sense and, most importantly, can be replicated. People don’t want a dramatic paradigm shift to occur in front of their faces, but they do want new ideas that help them to think differently about problems or questions in the field.
The idea that it would be in the interest of any scientist, let alone hundreds of thousands of scientists, to do nothing but sing along, just doesn’t make any sense to me. Where would the funding for that come from?
If we wait 20 to 30 years to do anything, either:
- You are right-no harm done, or
- You are wrong-we’re royally fucked.
If we decide to quit screwing around and do everything we can right now, either:
- We are right, and maybe can come out ahead of the game, or
- We are wrong, the Earth is in a better condition, and we are definitely ahead of the game.
Seems to me that, using logic and reason alone, you are wrong.
Well, since I said “of the sort outlined in the IPCC” you’re disputing a tautology here. In any case, please tell me your standard for demonstrating overwhelming scientific consensus.
So, in sum, you don’t trust scientists until you can personally understand their arguments? You assert that there’s no similarly compelling evidence for AGW. How do you know? How do you know what makes a piece of climate evidence compelling or not?
Have you read the IPCC report?
I think you overestimate the amount of the aforementioned you possess.
Kidding.
Would you let a layperson design a bridge you were going to use?
You’re a layperson, how would steel stand up against carbon fiber for given support structures? Be sure to factor in shearing forces, weight, cost, load supported, the weather patterns and temperature ranges the bridge will endure, the geologic stability of the area, and the ease of repainting.
How about if a critical thinking layperson designs a high-rise apartment that you’re going to live in?
Could a critical thinking layperson design a car engine from the ground up and would it run as well as the motor in your vehicle?
You’re way ignorant if you think laypeople can understand complex engineering and scientific issues without study. It’s study that transforms them from lay people into experts. If you’re too lazy to engage in the study, you have no tools to work with.
Fact: You are too lazy, busy, broke or disinterested to get a degree in one of the appropriate sciences that would give you the tools necessary to understand the necessary minutiae.
Your opinion is thus worthless. Kthxbye!
That’s a well known fallacy that is usually referred to as “Pascal’s Wager.”
Pascal’s wager is a fallacy because of the nature of positing a higher power. The precautionary principle is a well-accepted principle of management, not a fallacy. Look it up.
Not by anyone who knows jack about “Pascal’s Wager”.