I am not anti science. The post was about my use of the term denier. I agree with the other post in that I am a denier of flat earth.
As far as consensus, I posted my thoughts on that. If you have cancer you are certainly free to follow the one doctor who says a multivitamins backed by acupuncture is all you need. Personally I would go to several doctors and seek a consensus on what I should do. Again, I think consensus is meaningful. That doesn't mean it is everything. The interesting thing is that when consensus has been wrong, such as Newtonian mechanics near the speed of light, opinion has rapidly changed and the consensus changed to a new one. Science is ever evolving. However, the fact that science evolves doesn't allow for the negation of past data and theories. There is a principle in the philosophy of science that says that a new theory must reduce to the old one in the domain where the old one was valid. I will follow consensus until someone presents a competing theory that explains all of the things the consensus theory explains along with correctly predicting the outcome of an experiment where the two theories disagree.
In terms of AGW, I have yet to see a theory that holds up as well as AGW. Just throwing doubt is the Merchants of Doubt method that the anti-AGW community so often use. The AGW denial community can't have it both ways. They can't throw out 5 different disjoint theories each with major holes and expect me to be convinced. On a risk assessment basis alone, I will follow the consensus view. In several forums I have challenged deniers time and again to pick a theory and prove it. THAT is the scientific way. The denier community reminds me of the politician who attacks another candidate's detailed plan while offering no plan of his own lest he be attacked.
Let me tell you that consensus moves at a glacial pace even when proven wrong. A great example are the US nutritional guidelines. Low fat high carb diets have been proven to be non effective as well as harmful. They have been in place and largely followed, for 40+ years, yet we have a diabetes explosion both in US and now China. There are lots of RCTs showing that low carb high fat (ketogenic) diets work better for weight loss, and can even CURE type 2 diabetes.
Long-Term Effects of a Novel Continuous Remote Care Intervention Including Nutritional Ketosis for the Management of Type 2 Diabetes: A 2-Year Non-randomized Clinical Trial Yet even posting this here is likely to get me attacked by the nutritional consensus police.
Eventually the guidelines will be re-written to reflect the growing consensus that low fat diets do not work and are harmful, and that high fat low carb diets are healthier. I may however be dead before that happens.
The null hypothesis is that recent global warming is mostly natural variation. If the CAGW theory fails, then we are still left with the null hypothesis.
I know skeptical science will try and say somehow the null hypothesis method of science does not apply to CAGW theory. They are wrong.
What CAGW does not have is a TESTABLE hypothesis. Which again, is how science is done. As an example: The hypothesis should be " a doubling of CO2 levels will cause the GMT to increase by 3C by 2100."
The issue there is that the only way to test the hypothesis is to measure the co2 and temp in 2100. Since we cannot do that, climate scientists build models to try and predict. If those models fail to predict the temperature increase in 15 years for a given level of co2, how in the world can they predict the increase in 80 years? If they fail at shorter time periods, they are not useful.
Give me an example of a peer reviewed paper that had a AGW testable hypothesis and disproved the null. I really am open minded to read it and dissect the methods and conclusions.
