> For example, James Hansen predicted the west side highway in NY would be underwater by 2008 This is a good example of how the fossil fuel companies create th

> For example, James Hansen predicted the west side highway in NY would be underwater by 2008 This is a good example of how the fossil fuel companies create the impression of uncertainty by finding any possible cause for doubt, exaggerating it, and then claiming it discredits entire careers or even the field. I’ve heard that claim from many people over the years but when you look at it you realize how weak it is. That was not in a peer-reviewed publican, or even a single claim: In 1988, he was speaking casually with a reporter who asked him to speculate about what would happen 40 years later if CO2 doubled. The reporter put that anecdote in the book. In 2001, the reporter gave an interview to Salon and briefly mentioned the conversation but misremembered the timing and left out the most important claim about doubling CO2 entirely. https://skepticalscience.com/Examining-Hansens-prediction-about-the-West-Side-Highway.html https://skepticalscience.com/Examining-Hansens-prediction-ab... This seems like an excellent distraction from the fact that the actual scientific consensus has been consistent since the 1980s and the publications like IPCC forecasts have proven quite accurate. The reason, of course, is that scientists have already been doing what you’re asking for. Those papers and reports represent enormous amounts of time spent creating and critically reviewing experiments, models, data, and thinking of new ways to cross check them. It would a career-making move to find a significant flaw, and the idea that there’s some perfectly hermetic conspiracy is laughable if you’ve ever been around a group of scientists. Now, contrast that with the deniers who promote those talking points. They get lavish funding from a range of industries (some got their start on behalf of the tobacco companies) and they’ve played games which are familiar to anyone who has dealt with creationists where they toss out various theories and move on to new ones as the old ones are disproven. While scientists have been converging on the truth from a variety of independent sources, the deniers have been all over the map and wrong in many different directions. If there are concerns about openness and reputation, the double standard is quite striking.