>>>What is scientific about the global warming studies? It is merely conjecture by a group of renegade quasi-scientists looking for funding for their research.
>>
>>Hardly. Virtual all Earth Scientists think the planet is warming and that human activity has something to do with it:
>>
>>http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
>>
>>The gist of this study is that while only 52% of Americans think there's consensus about global warming among experts, in fact in this study of Earth scientists, 90% agreed that there is global warming and 82% say that
>>human activity is a controlling factor. Fewer than 10% said humans have no role in global warming (the rest choose "I'm not sure")
>>
>>Full disclosure: this was a self-selecting study. Invitations weresent to 10,000+ identified Earth scientists (essentially, all the Earth Scientists in the US); about 30% chose to participate. It was done in a way that kept participants anonymous, so no issues with facing embarrassment.
>>
>>The real issue is that providing both sides of an issue has been so beaten into the media that they've presented this topic as if there is real scientific disagreement, which is not the case.
>>
>>Tamar
>
>The problem is scientific consensus != truth. As scientists, we often don't know what we don't know. This idea is illustrated in an interesting read on an earlier geologic controversy:
>
>The Rejection of Continental Drift: Theory and Method in American Earth Science
>by Naomi Oreskes
>
>It is expensive, but your library should be able to obtain a copy. It explains how 50 years ago, the scientific consensus in North America was that the geosynclinal theory of tectonics was the best explanation for the geologic features of the earth. Alfred Wegener was one of the first to articulate the alternate theory of plate tectonics. The reaction of the 'consensus' scientific community of that time is captured in this quote:
>
> "Reaction to Wegener's theory was almost uniformly hostile, and often exceptionally harsh and scathing; Dr. Rollin T. Chamberlin of the University of Chicago said, "Wegener's hypothesis in general is of the footloose type, in that it takes considerable liberty with our globe, and is less bound by restrictions or tied down by awkward, ugly facts than most of its rival theories.""
>
>from http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/wegener.html
>
>Today, the theory of plate tectonics is widely accepted. 100 years from now, who knows? Scepticisim is an admirable attribute of any scientist IMO.

But once the theory was tested and the results replicated, scientific thought moved forward. That's what has happened with global warming. A theory was proposed, models were built to test, and the theory gained strength.

Yes, it's possible that it's all wrong, but what isn't the case right now is that there's any particular controversy about it in the scientific community. Today's Earth scientists think the Earth is getting warmer.

Tamar