Quote:
Originally Posted by Slybacon
I guess this worth commenting as the topic of proof seems to come up a lot. Outside the realms of pure mathematics it is impossible to prove anything absolutely. What you have here is a scientific consensus - it's the collective judgement of a very large majority of scientists. In 2009 the University of Illinois did a survey of 3146 climate scientists (all of whom had published papers on climate science), and 97% of those agreed that human activity is a major contributory factor in global warming.
Of course I guess the conspiracy theorists will argue that this just some sort of global conspiracy where thousands of scientists have got together to fool the rest of us. This is so ludicrously unlikely that I do not see how any rational person could take it seriously.
Absolute proof is not relevant anyway - even if there was a 10% chance that the scientists were wrong, who would want to risk the future of the world on such a long shot?
"Don't try and change my mind with facts" - Tom Paxton |
Absolutely agree, however I was at least attempting to come up for a criteria for falsifiability. The unfortunate fact is there is but one earth which makes controlled experiments of large scale phenomena rather difficult.
As such you are left with direct observation and falsifying climate models until you come up with one that vaguely works.