mike777, on 2014-September-10, 21:36, said:
You call expert consensus =evidence. Bill does not..I do not.
I point out examples where expert opinion, consensus opinion was very wrong in medicine. You know math, are there examples where consensus in math was wrong?
Smoking, trans fat. The expert opinion was wrong, very wrong. There are many other examples...see baseball.
Given all of that when I go to the ER, at that moment, I do rely on expert opinion, I do tend to rely on the voice of authority in the ER. But when a close loved one had Cancer I did not rely on experts. I challenged them when it came to evidence and treatments. I found that cancer experts know little very little when it comes to cancer and treatments. The unknown was much greater than the known evidence. I found that experimental evidence was in very short supply due to costs and time.
Time is the most important factor when we discuss evidence. People seem to want to disagree with this.
But climate change has not reached the stage of ER?
To say that 97% or whatever accept climate warming as evidence for specific policy changes is wrong, in error. Too claim that global warming is settled science is too not know science, the method of science.
To put it in math terms, to say 97% of math phd's say a math theory is evidence to accept it as truth is a terrible argument. This sort of thing makes me want to hear from the 3% and their counter evidence. No all theory is not equal, but please put it in terms of evidence not because one is an accepted expert.
This is simply a word game. It does not get at the heart of the matter and that is that those who are in the best position to interpret the data have looked at that data and 97% reached the same conclusion.
We don't have to call their consensus conclusion evidence but it is stupid to ignore their conclusion and equally stupid to ignore that their consensus is nearly unanimous.