|
The thing I find amazing is that people often claim that people need to be free thinking when they disagree with the majority, but when they agree with it, they claim that those who disagree with them are just wrong.
The simple fact of the matter is that climate science is a complex science, and therefore we are generally only really beginning to understand everything that is happening. But that doesn't mean we don't understand anything about what is happening.
Further, the cynicism expressed here by a number of people tends to ignore the reality of the last political administration. A scientist does not get federal funding or prestige by bucking the political will of the President. Whether he was wrong or right, President Bush was on the side of those who believed that climate change either was not happening or was not man made. Scientists like Jim Hansen and others did not make any real friends by bucking the established power structure.
The final thought I have is that many of the most vocal opponents to the position that man made global warming is real are not people who I would trust to be adequate interpreters of the data. The very complexity of the data requires lots of compute time on HPC systems to make sense. Being am MD, biologist, chemist or even a physicist does not make you qualified. I know I certainly am not qualified to interpret all the data.
Funny, none of us are free thinkers enough to try to tell Boeing Engineers how to best build a plane but we assume that because the scientists are dealing with a subject even more complex than aerospace engineering, that suddenly we are as qualified to interpret the data as the scientists are.
--
Bill
|