Comment Re: You're an idiot... (Score 1) 444
YOU are ignoring the great many scientists who do disagree with IPCC
Not ignoring (I've read some of Dr Lindzen's papers, and others); just giving more weight to the far greater numbers of practicing climate scientists who support the IPCC's conclusions. Dr Lindzen and the others you mention are very much in the minority, according to numerous studies from many different parties, and of course the IPCC's own many authors, backed by their reviews of the last 5 years of climate papers. If you want to call listening to a 97% majority "cherry-picking", I don't really know how to respond.
your reliance on consensus as an argument suggests that you actually don't know much about how science really works
It's not consensus of uninformed opinions, it's confirmation of expert results. I'm sure you're smart enough to realise that, so I can only imagine you don't want to.
When a scientist publishes a paper, especially one that contradicts current thinking, we don't immediately throw out all our textbooks; first, other scientists try to confirm their results. Particularly in complex fields, there is debate - are the conclusions actually supported by the data? Are there any questionable assumptions, are the techniques applied appropriate, are there any important factors that have been overlooked, are the interpretations of the data reasonable, that sort of thing. Peer review catches the obvious errors, but particularly for papers that challenge the status quo, the biggest question is usually, how do you reconcile this result with the existing body of evidence? Declaring everybody else to be "wrong" doesn't get you far; you have to find other data that confirms your own results, and you have to explain how all that existing counter-evidence doesn't apply to your conclusions. If you can do that convincingly, other scientists will support your work. If you can't, your results are considered suspect and are assumed to have a flaw, at least until more confirmation can be found. After all, if two observations disagree then either they're observing different things, or one is just wrong.
This is a crucial part of the scientific process, as much as peer review. It's what saves us from crackpots and wasting time on free-energy machines, it protects us from inadvertently flawed results, and it's also what keeps the majority of science and engineering focused and on track. We can't all be experts in every field, so we defer to those that are. I personally don't have the expertise or experience to properly judge Dr Lindzen's work, but his colleagues do - and if the vast majority of them still aren't convinced by his claims after 15 years, then it's fairly safe to for the lay person to assume that his claims (and those of the handful of scientists who continue to deny the results of the thousands of other climatologists) are most probably either flawed, or just don't apply.
Of course, if you still believe that Scientist A's pet theory is right when Scientists B through Z have all produced peer-reviewed results that disagree, you either have to believe your own judgement is superior to theirs (hint: it isn't), or that they're all in a huge conspiracy to supress the truth. I'll leave you to decide which is more likely.