What makes you think we're basing this on the best available science? I think it's just another lazy assertion.
It clearly is. To claim otherwise, I think is just another delusional assertion.
[A] reliance upon due authority is a central tenet of the methodology of science.
It's based on evidence and models that explain that evidence well. ...
Which is probably what I was getting at when I wrote, "ultimately all authoritative statements in science are evidence based." Surely any High School child who has ever heard the phrase "the scientific method" could tell us that.
There is no due authority. I think this profound misunderstanding of science is a key part of the problem with human thought today.
As you fail to appreciate the role of authority in the practice of science, it is you who are suffering a profound misunderstanding of science. And while we're at it, a key problem with human thought today is the sense of entitlement which leads people to believe their ignorance exactly as valuable as someone else's knowledge.
The very instrumentation we must rely on is crystalised authority. Take that instrument most immediate to you: Perhaps your skills exceed mine, but I cannot easily (or perhaps at all) calculate in my head what 124.66 times 10 to the power of 1.73 might be. So I ask my computer. It tells me 3611.991601 give or take a place or two. The nature of fp calculations notwithstanding, that's close enough for me. And if I were to use a calculation such as this, I would be relying on authority.
The same applies in pharmacology (the science discipline in which I was trained), when we power up our gas-liquid chromatograph, or when a virologist "looks through" an electon microscope, or ... I was going to mention the large hadron collider, but that is probably the exceptional situation where the bods using it understand it better than anyone else :)(that alone doesn't make it free from scientific authority of course). There is immense amount of authority contained with the very tools of the trade.
Moreover, as I pointed out any citation to previous work, where it is not minded to contradict that work, is literally an appeal to authority and indeed often referred to by that name (ie. 'authority').
And an important subset of this is where a scientist in one field needs to make use of the work (other than instruments) of another. You are given two choices: a) do the hard yards become and expert yourself and publish OR b) defer to the orthodox opinion in the field. Now determining exactly what is the orthodoxy may not be unproblematic. And consensus in science (though I do not generally like the term) is useful at least as it makes this task trivial.
What would remain of science without authority? No use of instrumentation you yourself have not devised. No co-operation across disciplines. No reliance on any previous work, not even to disprove it. Nothing. Without authority there is no science.
That's a pretty dishonest way to characterize their work since they instead have provided reasons to distrust its robustness.
Don't be impertient!
In any discipline which, like science, must necessarily rely upon authority, the danger that this authority will overwhelm it naturally exists. This is the danger which you quite correctly apprehend, though I think hold you mistaken to have discovered it here. The history of science is replete with cases when undue personal authority perpetuated error for longer than it should. And this is precisely why, in a field where a minority of vocal sceptics are active, were a blowtorch criticism has been applied, we have greater cause for confidence.
Consider Lindzen. While almost always ended up being shown wrong, his fulfilling the role of devil's advocate, from the urban heat island effect onward, no matter the animosity it may have generated, forced the mainstream to go back re-evaluate, incorporate his objections and thus improve the science. Or consider Landsea. His work actually refuted an emerging "consensus" on hurricane frequency. We know thanks to him that there is at least one less inaccuracy in the current science than there would have been. Far from giving us reasons to distrust the robustness of the science, they have greatly contributed to it.
But not only does science itself rely on authority, science is itself social system of authority, and one, given its instrumentality, that sets it above many other systems of authority. It is for this reason that serious people must necessarily work from the findings of the IPCC as a starting point and that those of you who, --not being prepared to publish in the scientific literature, --who do not, place yourselves beyond the boundaries of serious discussion. At least in those parts of the world not suffering serious political malaise.