Quote:
Originally Posted by Floorist
Have you noticed that any scientist, no matter what his field, who believes in global warming is a genius, but those that don't are idiots? Many of the scientists that the global warming people praise are not climate experts, but let a non-expert come out against global warming and they are wrong.
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That could be because those who are
not among the denial crowd either dug into the actual papers involved or are clear-headed enough to listen to actual experts instead of, you know, those who don't actually know anything about the subject.
I'll give an analogy here. Suppose Person A wants to quote one of my papers. Person A will be
right about the topic covered in the paper. That does
not make that person an expert in my field, but it does mean that the person is basically quoting my results, possibly simplifying them to make them easier for a general audience to consume. It would not be wrong to trust someone quoting my results (after all, they're in
math, so they leave no room at all for doubt), even if that person doesn't really understand why the results are true.
Suppose Person B has a similar level of understanding, and she went around claiming that my results were
wrong. Person B would be untrustworthy. Those results are
not wrong, and I proved that they are not. Such claims require a stubborn lack of expertise or an agenda or both.
Remember, Person A and Person B are equally knowledgeable (i.e., they know what the results are, but the probably don't have the expertise to reproduce them). Person A is more
honest, though, because Person A doesn't pretend to be able to overturn a mathematical proof without doing any work.
In discussions of climate change, there are plenty of people like Person B. It's a sign of something fishy going on when someone claims to be able to overturn a bunch of rigorous scientific research without doing any actual work.
We are right to be suspicious of such people.
On the other hand, those who read the results of others' research and work to communicate those results to the public, especially when the implications of the results are a serious as they are with climate change research, are doing something laudable.
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