> By the way, I agree with you that applying the word "crisis" to
> climate is problematic at best;
I think the problem with such adversarial debates reducing the climate
issue to a simple no/yes answer is,
that it well, isn't a simple no/yes type of issue. It's not about
"doing nothing" or "taking drastic action now", it's about a whole
range of questions, where people can have a panoply of opinions.
> In any case, I think we need to get serious about what we mean by
> "consensus"; dropping the whole idea under unfair pressure from the
> likes of Crichton is a bizarre and excessive response. Somehow science
> needs to be able to reach conclusions, and not just debate endlessly.
The key here I think is to limit "scientific consensus" to matters of
fact, as opposed to matters of moral value judgment. And there are
issues that are in principle matters of fact, but where the complexity
is such, that personal biases just cannot be excluded, and I think to
a large degree, judging the consequences of climate change falls into
that category.
Eg, think about agriculture and climate change. To judge the impact,
you have to have some knowledge about large scale irrigation systems,
about whether these schemes will be politically feasible in 2040
China, and so forth. This comes down to an informed guess in the end,
an informed guess about which reasonable people can disagree.
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