I think the urgency of the situation we face might be easier to visualise in more personal terms.
If your doctor sent samples from an odd growth you had on your arm to researchers around the world they tell you that "we can say with 90% confidence your growth is cancerous"; would you really want to sit around talking about the other ten per cent?
Or would you just get on with treating it? I'm for the latter

CathHarp - that reminds me of a joke, you'll like this. So this bloke has these terrible top of back pains, goes to doctors, surgeons, specialists etc (I'm cutting it back here, you can wring this one right out) who all recommend he gets one agate (testicle) cut off. So he does that, but the pain goes on .. back to the docs etc, and they convince him he should get the other one cut off - which he does. He's been off work for weeks now doing all this.

He recovers, no more top of back pain, goes back to work, but can't find his old overalls - so goes to the store and asks for a new set, the storeman asks, what size are you, a 4 he says - no says the storeman, you're a 5 - if you wear a 4, you'd get a pain at the top of your back.

The moral being, specialists and experts can be wrong, have been wrong before and what is leading edge science today may be looked upon similarly to witch doctory in years to come.

Take the researcher in Australia who defied the world with his thinking that stomach ulcers were a biologic problem, when 99% of the worlds medical science thought it was stress related - and were wrong, and he was RIGHT, Nobel prize.

Don't be fooled with this "consensus" thinking, it's not always correct. Retain a little scepticism and questioning, it's good for you.

CathHarp, what I find more interesting is your leaping to a pathological/diagnostic metaphor.

Protagoras: "Of course we have in the past, seen this man [Plimer] self-destruct in splendid fashion:"

Could you tell me to what you are referring.

"Could you tell me to what you are referring."

I regret Fungochumley that I decline your request. I do not wish to waste my time on a troll - a troll who spends his time on OLO, surfing from one thread to another to make mischief. I have no desire to supply you with any information - particularly since you appear incapable of remaining on topic or contributing anything relevant or worthwhile to any debate.

On reflection and in consideration of your continuous blowhard blustering, could we utilise you as a windfarm?

Yeah. Anyone. When and where did Plimer "self-destruct" in the past?

I don't care about whether we can qualify the "splendid fashion" part. But such a claim seems very relevant to this article and thread.

Protag: "I regret Fungochumley that I decline your request....I have no desire to supply you with any information."

Well, nothing new there. A typically evasive reply and a shame as, on this rare occasion, I was vaguely interested in something you wrote. I guess I'll just have to mark it down as another unsubstantiated smear.

On surfing from one thread to another making mischief, that is your unfortunate interpretation when caught out and put on the spot (as in the species dialogue below - an example please). So reminiscent of that spoiled princess, dickie, whereabouts unknown.

It must be concerning that a "resident dimwit" like myself can catch you out so easily.