Hey look, it's a climate change thread!

[Dill]

(01-18-2017, 08:17 PM)masterpanthera_t Wrote: As far as CC is concerned, I think you and I are in agreement, except for this:  I'm saying that since I'm not well versed on the subject, I don't know if there's a scientific consensus.  All your other arguments presuppose a scientific consensus and then pose a question of "do you believe?"  My point is if you show me that there's a scientific consensus (not saying that there isn't), then we can move towards the implementation side of discussion.  So, I, personally cannot say one way or another, unless this can be shown.  It's possible it's there, and I'm just too lazy to look for it.  I'm simply saying that if I am not able to get to that point, I would be voting for policy decisions simply based on faith, which I'd rather not do when it affects other people (especially even more than me).   There are certain other scientific principles I do not understand thoroughly, but take them for granted as they have been scientifically accepted by more or less everyone (things that I learn in school and College etc.).  Possibly this acceptance needs to become mainstream before I myself would be comfortable with voting for policy decisions, but even if that's not the case, I need to be convinced that there is a scientific consensus (Again, not saying that there isn't, but to my untrained eye there's a chance b.s. arguments can still look like valid counters).  I'll put it this way, if you can link up some articles which confirm a scientific consensus, I will consider it seriously.

If you are not a scientist, you might find the political history of climate change denial more interesting than the science itself--especially the effort to confuse the public regarding climate science.

But as to the oft referenced scientific consensus, a good place to start is NASA's official position:                        http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
They also have a climate change tutorial which is a public service.

But there are dozens of sources on this consensus Check chapter 4 here:
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=3YMUAwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA105&dq=consensus+on+climate+change&ots=MwHEg_0cBM&sig=bkHN_MiIAfQmdBzwEr29OCxqBUU#v=onepage&q=consensus%20on%20climate%20change&f=false

Scientists check the consensus themselves here. http://www.pnas.org/content/107/27/12107.full
Abstract: "A broad analysis of the climate scientist community itself, the distribution of credibility of dissenting researchers relative to agreeing researchers, and the level of agreement among top climate experts has not been conducted and would inform future ACC discussions. Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field surveyed here support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers."