I think we miss the boat when we argue conspiracies, corruption, anti-science, authoritarians , etc.   You will find more illumination in understanding precisely what the consensus is. And precisely what the models and the theory are and whether these theories have held up to objective scrutiny, replication, and prediction the way a scientific theory should?  Without this clarity all the references to anecdotes, acronymed agengies, and assorted articles mean very little, except for the purpose of political posturing.

Is it a conspiracy or ignorance? Does it matter?  I think it is a lack of understanding of exactly what we are agreeing on.  It seems that there is agreement that we are in a warming period-even with a recent hiatus. There is agreement that humans affect the planet, but there the agreement starts to slide- there is less agreement of how much CO2 is the dominant factor, even less how certain, urgent, irreversible and catastrophic this problem is, and even less that any of the proposed solutions will have any effect.

Even among all of the top scientific acronyms you will find that the agreement is based on the questions asked.  I think that there is still much to be discerned, and that the science of this topic is still too primitive to reach the conclusions too many have reached with any degree of certainty.  The 97% is pure bogus, a statistical fraud,  and the willingness of one to quickly believe this number speaks volumes about whether this subject is approached scientifically or politically.

While we see old glaciers melt in one country, we find snow in Sydney, Australia in August for the first time since Andrew Jackson was president.  I do not understand what either anecdote has to do with true climate science.

I remain both ignorant and curious about the science in this debate. My skepticism is driven by the language, the authoritarianism,  the history of this and similar movements, and the weak  epistemology of the arguments.

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