1. If I went to a research agency and said 'I want to study whether the earth is flat or not' they'd laugh at me. The reason why is because there is a general consensus that the earth is not flat. So, here's the first problem - why would scientists AGREE on AGW? It makes much more sense for them to muddy the waters, to disagree on this issue, because having no definitive answer or having large-scale disagreement on a scientific issue ensures more funding to research it!
2. The scientists we remember are the ones who disagreed with the mainstream view. We remember Newton because he decided that instantaneous velocity wasn't a stupid concept and developed calculus to examine it. And in doing so he changed forever how we view motion and forces. We remember Einstein because he said 'actually, Maxwell's equations prove the speed of light is constant in all frames of reference' when just about everyone else was trying to show that it wasn't. So it makes no sense at all for scientists to agree ... if they disagreed on AGW, and someone came up with a theory that matched all the data, did away with our emission of CO2, and showed the physics behind it, well, that person would ride the lecture circuit for years and make lots of money. So there's no financial or personal incentive for scientists to all agree.
3. Scientists are taxpayers too. The way some people talk, you'd think scientists lived on their own little island. They don't. They're people like everyone else who drive cars, pay mortgages, have kids, go on holiday, pay for gas, electricity, etc. So why, exactly, would thousands of taxpayers DELIBERATELY put forward a theory if the consequences of dealing with that theory would harm industry, the economies of the countries they live in, their take-home pay, the cars they could drive, etc.
4. If scientists wanted to make money, they could just reverse position, go to the oil companies and say 'look, for one million a year I'll publish whatever you say you want. I'll fudge my data, I'll write the papers, I'll bribe and cheat and bluff, but I'll do it for hard cold cash'. So why would thousands of scientists do the exact opposite of the thing petrochemical companies would pay through the nose for them to do?
5. If scientists are lying to us, then they're using public money to send satellites into orbit, fudging the data, deliberately hiding the truth from us, and making false conclusions. That's fraud in any language, so why would thousands of people risk being sentenced to jail-time for misappropriating public funds?
I don't buy it. If you wanted to push an eco-agenda then coming up with something that will affect the planet severely after you die isn't a great idea. I mean, if you wanted to, why not just say 'THAT hurricane was global warming in action'? Why show a graph with a 15 year flat spot, if you believe the deniers arguments? If you want to make money, agreeing with other scientists and blaming the biggest companies on the planet isn't a good way to go. So this argument that 'scientists are lying to us' is just people being intellectually lazy and saves them having to actually understand the science.
Now, some people here have argued that they don't believe the scientists because scientists have been wrong in the past. Actually, when you look at it, they haven't. We might have replaced Newton's ideas but they're not wrong ... we still use Newton's law of gravity to send spacecraft to other planets, we still use Newton's laws to model cars moving around a racetrack, or to determine the rate at which something falls. Maxwell's equations might have been replaced by quantum electrodynamics, but we still use Maxwell's equations to explain the dipole radiation pattern of a radio antenna, and in applications such as radar, mobile phones, and digital electronics. Scientific theories model the data we have at the time. The data tells us our planet is warming. Modelling that data correctly involves us factoring in CO2 emissions by human activities. You can't say 'that's nonsense' until you actually show it's nonsense. Which is the difference between real science, and the pseudoscience of speculation all talk and no pants of the deniers.
The human brain evolved to identify patterns in the world - and that is what the brain does. It will find (create) patterns even if there is insufficient or no empirical evidence - because that is what it does. It is a great adaptation - except when it creates pattens by "connecting the wrong dots" or when it invents dots to fill in imaginary patterns.
The answer to you question is that it could only happen in minds of people with dysfunctional pattern recognition.
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Fred --
>>You mean like all the scientists from antiquity that thought the earth was flat?<<
Name one after the 1600s. Eratosthenes figured out the earth was round in the 3rd century BC using only a stick. Columbus knew the earth was round - he just underestimated its size.
>>You don't prove by example. You only disprove by example. Feel free to ask absolutely ANY physicist or mathematician on earth. So... if you don't understand how science works... please stop telling me it's wrong.<<
"Proof" is not a scientific concept. Since "...you don't understand how science works...<< please stop pretending like you do - it's dishonest.
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Xi Gua --
>>Science without experimentation is not science and resulting results cannot be held as truth.<<
Untrue.
See my comment above regarding the dishonesty of pretending you know anything about science when you do not.
>>It took 1 man, Christopher Columbus, to prove the Earth is round, at a time when everyone else thought the Earth is flat.<<
See my comments about about science, intellectual dishonesty, and Columbus.
In addition, every ancient society that sailed the seas knew that the earth was round. Anyone who watches ships sail out of - and into - sight can figure it out. If the earth was flat, ships would appear and disappear all at once. However, that is not what we observe. What we do observe is that the highest part of the ship appears first and disappears last.
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Koboid --
>>i'm sorry dude<<
You're a sorry dude, all right.
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Ottawa Mike --
OK man - who are you and where is the real OM?
Although Mike tries too hard to find evidence supporting his beliefs, he does not usually throw around concepts like "cognitive dissonance" in ways that are completely inappropriate. The sentence sounds like something that could only come from that fountain of "stupid thoughts for stupid people" - FOX.
Besides Ike Newton, I'm sure that time travelling Al Gore also corrupted Copernicus, Keppler and Galileo as well. Aren't you glad that Aristotle and Ptolemy weren't interested in Mr Gore's confederate money? Apparently Mr Gore forgot to take some gold coins in his time machine.
And probably some in the South where they teach that Earth is 6,000 years old and the professors start the day sampling from their stills.
Gary F
Perhaps Caliserv hacked into OM's account.
"It took 1 man, Christopher Columbus, to prove the Earth is round, at a time when everyone else thought the Earth is flat"
Oh FFS...........are you seriously this stupid???
The earth was known to be "round" at least 2000 years before Columbus sailed - from simple experimentation and observation by ancient Greeks
Sailing from Spain to the Americas obviously does not prove the earth to be "round" - perhaps you could rent an Atlas and get a 12 year old to explain it to you
Except for the University of Alabama at Huntsville, of course--home to John Christy and Roy Spencer.
Oh, and I'm pretty sure the young earth "scientists" have not been corrupted either (actually Spencer and Christy may fall into that category too. One the young earthers tried to shush me when I started talking global warming as a guest lecturer to his meteorology class. He taught physics also and he was going to take his class to the Creation Science Research museum as a field trip.
See, not all the universities have been corrupted.
They can't. However people who's education is so lacking, as to think that Columbus proved the planet was round, you can understand that they could be convinced to believe just about anything.
(could it be that the Maya scientists explained what they had known for a thousand years)
They couldn't be corrupted. However, if you can convince enough ignorant people that they are, then it is possible that the problem can be kicked down the road, while the fossil fuel companies make more and more money.
You mean like all the scientists from antiquity that thought the earth was flat? Or that Newton's laws were the last word on mechanics? Or that Maxwell's eqns were the last word on electrodynamics? Starting to see a trend here Jr?
Oh... why didn't you just say you were one of these moronic a**clowns that thinks your indignation somehow changes a set of facts? I have a news flash for you Jr: You don't prove by example. You only disprove by example. Feel free to ask absolutely ANY physicist or mathematician on earth. So... if you don't understand how science works... please stop telling me it's wrong.
Do you have a credible objection or don't you Barney? Why don't you just say something about my grandmother? It would be every bit as applicable as what you just said.
All major scientists are evil; they refuse to take money from Big Oil and other energy suppliers who pay good money to have their propaganda broadcast to the gullible.
Global warming is a myth, i'm sorry dude.
According to the proclamation of "Xi Gua" (the ??th)
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130322064737AAcIM1A
The four IPCC reports were written by many thousands of scientists from on the order of a hundred different countries. Who corrupted all of them for over a quarter of a century? Was it the evil Protocols eye? http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AjCHh4_mB5cSuf63JIO7RL0jzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20120226101746AAUznYN
I admire your personal efforts to fight off cognitive dissonance.
