I agree with you for the times you stated. My point is, that the consensus of what western Europeans (first world nation ancestry) long ago, was that the world was flat.
First world what now? Are you referring to the Celts and the Gauls? Or perhaps the Neanderthals?
My point is that consensus is not science, and is proven wrong time and again.
Actually, consensus is
critical to science. There needs to be a consensus on a wide variety of laws, theories, procedures, methods and so on. If scientists can't agree on most of those aspects, they can't possibly check each other's work, let alone get anything done.
More critically, no one is saying that "the consensus is right solely because there is a consensus." Rather, the consensus is right because the evidence is strong enough to convince the vast majority of scientists that the claims are correct.
And of course, proclaiming "the scientific consensus was wrong about X, Y and Z!" (which is clearly what you're suggesting with the Flat Earth meme) does not prove that "the consensus is
always wrong;" or that politically motivated pseudo-scientific alternatives are correct.
For example, there is a consensus that conservation laws are universal; that nothing can move faster than
c in a vacuum, without going backwards in time; that photons have no mass; that water is primarily composed of H2O; that cancer can spread; evolution is a critical component of any proper understanding of biology; and that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. For
some strange reason, only two of those items routinely cause howls of protests, complaints about consensus, and attacks on the integrity of scientists.
As for the IPCC material... Hogwash. They cherry pick what they use and are a political organization with political type goals in mind. What they are great for is finding actual peer reviewed papers. They list hundreds. The best thing to do is to find those papers they list, and read them. When you do that, you might notice the inconvenient facts the IPCC leaves out of their assessment reports.
Your neutrality on the topic is noted. :roll:
The IPCC's job is to evaluate all of the latest research, and present high-level summaries of the current understanding of climate change. We can even say that it presents the *COUGH* consensus view on the subject, and notes when there is not a consensus on specific subtopics. While the IPCC is not completely devoid of problems, nothing along those lines will ever satisfy those who are determined to criticize and/or discredit its work.
I.e. the fact that you do not like their conclusions is insufficient reason to attack the organization or its work.
By the way, I find it truly
fascinating that these critics do almost no research on their own, and never present anything that is as comprehensive as the IPCC reports, and seem incapable of presenting a single coherent alternative theory. Instead, it's a crowd of deniers, all shouting something different, and all that matters is that it exculpates human activity from having any noticeable impact on the environment.
But go ahead, and tell us all: What exactly are they leaving out of your reports, that you deem credible, important, or numerous?
