Scientific Consensus & the public
To Matthew:
Science is not a religion. You'll find scientific consensus will change pretty rapidly once someone comes out with good, solid evidence to the contrary.
With climate change, so far, no-one has managed to do so. Until this happens, we plebs have to accept the "consensus" unless you're willing to examine _all_ the evidence yourself, including all background science: mathematics (including number theory, chaos theory, modeling theory etc), geology, soil mechanics, hydrodynamics, stellar physics, quantum physics, etc, etc.
Funny thing is, the deniers are the ones with quite a bit more funding behind them and yet, they cannot conclusively give proof that "all is well"? (I'm sure if you're a climatologist, getting funding from the US gov, or any carbon-energy exporting country for that matter is easy if you're willing to come up with research showing that carbon dioxide is not that bad after all...)
Whenever I talk to scientists (and I'm an engineer at a Uni, I meet quite a few) frankly they're either scared shitless or exasperated at the inaction and ignorance. Frankly at this point I think the only question left is if it is *we* that are screwed, or our kids.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
