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Originally Posted by BuckFutter  Among the vast majority of scientists there is agreement that the warming trend is at least being accellerated by human activity if not being caused by it. |
That alone says very little. I can say my speed on the highway is increasing by .0005 mph but it won't really matter for quite some time. To say that human activity has had no effect on the entire system that is Earth, is quite laughable. To say in the midst of a warming trend that human activity has had a reverse cooling effect on the system is quite ludicrous (without solid data). So on the logical relevance of your claim, it really doesn't tell us that much info at all to say that a vast majority don't think human activity contributes to global cooling, but global warming.
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Originally Posted by BuckFutter There are some that disagree. And there are some scientists that will swear that smoking doesn't cause cancer and that evolution is not a proven fact. |
How far do you intend to go with this? Some with your point of view go as far as to liken anthropogenic global warming critics to holocaust deniers, I assume you're not one of those...?
Also, evolution is not a proven fact, just like gravity isn't a proven fact. Both are Scientific Theories that describes systems in which facts contribute to form reasonably conclusive findings.
But to address the original claim that there is something wrong with this statement:
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Originally Posted by BuckFutter "science doesn't know whether we are experiencing a dangerous level of global warming or how bad the greenhouse effect is, if it exists at all." |
The mention of dangerous level is good. What scientific evidence does this overwhelming scientific consensus have that shows we're approaching/have approached a "dangerous level" of global warming? The following questions don't necessarily have the easy answers the majority of the public thinks they have:
1) Is the current warming trend Not part of a larger natural cycle the Earth goes through?
2) If it's abnormal, then how much is human activity contributing?
3) Do we know what the "tipping point" is, and how far we are from it/passed it?
4) If it's abnormal and we're not at the tipping point, is there anything human activity can do to change this abnormal warming trend, and if there is, is it enough to prevent us from going over the tipping point?
I believe that the media already has the majority of the US public believing that Question 4 can be answered with 2 Yes's. Scientifically speaking, they don't have any grounds for believing that. We don't even have enough scientific data to conclude that the answer to Question 1 is undeniably Yes.
Many people in the end are basing their beliefs on computer models, and what they're predicting. Simply put, these same models haven't been shown to be precisely reliable. In the past 5 years they've predicted some of our hurricane seasons to be more powerful than they actually were.
Why do people believe it so readily? One guess...it's just too Hollywood of a story to pass up. "We're to blame, we haven't been responsible, we better clean up our act or it's doomsday." It's some of the same self-blame thinking that semi-encourages people to believe in God and the concept of sin.
Big picture, I agree we should take claims of bias seriously, to an extent. Once an idea enters a textbook, it takes on a life of it's own whether it's true or not, fact or not.