It's truly amazing how ordinary lay people, in the face of almost unanimous scientific opinion that climate change is happening and is human generated, somehow believe they are much better scientists themselves.

In the war of words, nowadays websites get thrown back and forward just like biblical passages used to be. I can prove anything on the web just as one can make all sorts of contrary interpretations of the bible.

For most of the past 35 years the scientific community did not accept climate change. Would not accept it - that is, until there was enough proof to overcome their natural conservatism. Even when evidence started to mount, they deferred on the issue until they were confidant this was not a temporary aberration. Then the statistics started to pile in, and the disasters and droughts and insurance bills.

I know many scientists. As a profession they are not a reckless bunch. Their reputations depend on them being fastidiously thorough. If anything, they were too conservative for the good of the planet. They should have strongly championed by the Precautionary Principle whilst they were deliberating on the scientific evidence.

In the long run it may even be the conservatism and tardiness of scientists that prevented action being taken whilst there was still yet time enough to react.

I have sympathy for those who find climate change too confronting. That is a normal reaction to social change. But they will get over it in time, just as the flat-earthers and anti-evolutionists have done.

Well said gecko.

Another bunch of very cautious professionals are the analysts in insurance companies. After all, they have to put their money where they mouth is. They are currently at the forefront of pushing for change.

T. Sett,

Why do you think that I’m trying to convince anyone of anything? Are you trying to convince others that your opinions are right? If so, you are on a hiding to nothing. I’m expressing an OPINION. This site is “On Line Opinion”. Got it?

I’ve reached an age where I’ve had ample real experience of life to be sure of what I think about my fellow humans. I meant it when I said, “…there is little point in trying to argue with the majority of people…”, and I am, therefore, the last person to try to convince the average person of anything; particularly my fellow OLO posters.

Disagree with me by all means; but kindly keep your sarcastic suggestions to yourself. I have no interest at all in your smart aleck, presumptuous “try this” suggestions. You have no idea what I have read, what “stuff” I have researched, and how and why I have come to the conclusions I have.

Express any opinions you wish to, but don’t ride on the back of people who have posted before you, like so many others who don’t have an original thought of their own

Mr Right. You do not know what research others have done, or what they have read, or where they have been, so you can not state with any degree of certainty that they are being led like sheep, or have blindly come to whatever conclusions they may have reached. They may in fact agree with your point of view, and nonetheless have come to that end whilst also being blindly lead. You do not know.

David

So in 50 or a hundred years time, when the forests have gone and all the wildlife are extinct, the oceans are barren and the waves are lapping on the foothills of the great dividing range, our grandchildren can console themselves with: "it's not all our fault; it's all part of a natural cycle. After all, two major extinctions have happened before, in the past thousand million years or so".
If you get shot in the foot, is it really any consolation that someone else pulled the trigger?
Perhaps the real question is not so much 'have we changed the climate', as 'can we change the climate'.
There appears to be quite compelling evidence that (wooden) shipbuilding around the Mediterranean for the past three thousand years has changed the climate of that area quite significantly, so the answer to both questions appears to be YES.

Gecko's comments are correct but only part of the story. It wasn't long ago that rejecting climate change was the scientific orthodoxy. Even a passing acquaintance with how orthodoxy in the scientific world changes shows that it doesn't happen easily or painlessly. Most scientists, steeped in a different theory or different assumptions and different conclusions find repudiation of previous orthodoxy incredibly hard (as most of us would) and only likely when the evidence is ovewhelming. There will always be those in the scientific community that are the last to move - and for years they will argue (and find scientific reasons to argue) that the earth is flat or the centre of the universe. It doesn't mean that the new orthodoxy is all right - but it clearly indicates that the scientific community has accepted the central claim of AGW.