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No one is claiming that truth is decided by a vote among scientists, and I don't see what's gained by pretending that anyone is. What is sometimes claimed (and
by gjm11 17y ago
No one is claiming that truth is decided by a vote among scientists, and I don't see what's gained by pretending that anyone is. What is sometimes claimed (and a good thing too, because I think it's true) is that when the great majority of experts in a field agree about something then they are likely (though of course not certain) to be right.
The Hadley emails do not in fact show that the consensus on climate change was the result of "derailing the literature", whatever exactly that is supposed to mean. And this glacier thing looks to me much more like a confluence of cockups than a deliberate attempt to mislead anyone.
Everyone should be critical about everything. That applies not only to the claim that humans are causing climate change, but also to the claim that we are not. It seems to me that the former claim wins easily in (1) plausibility on the grounds of basic physics, (2) weight of scientific evidence (so far as I or any other layman can tell), and (3) historical honesty/dishonesty of proponents.
Are you suggesting that AGW needs to be "proved" whereas not-AGW does not? If so, why?