Comment Re:How can people expect... (Score 2, Insightful) 823
All I'm saying is that most of the 'studies' I've seen floating around the press smell fishy to me
The problem is that you rely on the news media for your information, and what you're going to get is information cherry-picked for its entertainment value, not for its scientific content.
Climate science is just as rigorous a discipline as any other, and the scientists working in the field are just as serious about their work as scientists working in genetics or neuroscience or anything else.
The problem is that the stakes are extremely high and in general the theory and data are converging on a very unpleasant prognosis for the future of our world. People really, really, REALLY don't like the prognosis. And it's understandable. If astronomers saw a swarm of Everest-sized asteroids heading our way that had a good chance of clobbering us in 50 to 100 years, people would react negatively to that too.
I suspect this reaction by the fearful and ignorant members of the public is a consequence of the fact that in the vast majority of the realm of human experience, our perceptions strongly shape reality. What we believe really can end up shaping what we see. Economics is a good example, with it's many self-fulfilling prophecies. But in the case of asteroids or climate change, it matters not one iota what people think or how they feel. What's going to happen is going to happen, and we'd better understand it if we want to stand a chance of coping with it.
Climate change does have the advantage of being theoretically quite simple - simple enough for just about anybody to understand if they're willing to open their eyes just a little bit. Radiative forcing is a simple stock-and-flow box model. If you can understand why the bathtub overflows when you leave the faucet running, even though the drain is open at the same time, then you should be able to understand that anthropogenic climate change is inevitable.