rod mclaughlinAn article explaining why 'scientific consensus' is a non-starter (18 jan 12)
I first became suspicious of the unprecedented man-made global warming hypothesis when its advocates started saying Greenpeacey things like 'consensus'. Can you imagine Einstein defending the theory of relativity on the grounds that most physicists agreed with it? My next doubt was raised when the hypothesis became more vague, rather than more precise, as usually happens in science - from 'global warming' to 'climate change'. Then the assumption that 'deniers' are wrong a priori, and therefore need explaining, rather than answering. Where have I come across that method of reasoning before? Then the claims of what motivated 'the deniers' - oil money, for example. When some of the global warming experts started saying it was as sure as the theory of evolution, I knew that I was looking at a political movement, not a scientific community.
The question of whether scientific questions are ever 'settled' has been going back and forth for ages. Here is a good article about it: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/16/the-myth-of-settled-science Richard Dawkins coined the phrase 'theorum' to describe something which is as certain as any scientific hypothesis can be (though not as certain as a mathematical theorem). Evolution seems to me to be in that category. Global warming doesn't quite make it. Back
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