How many Presidential candidates are susceptible to groupthink, scare campaigns and low-base science agitprop? Thanks to Seth Borenstein, Michael Mann & Andrew Dessler we can rank them according to their ability to resist profoundly unscientific propaganda like “there is a consensus”.
Ted Cruz is clearly the best at holding his own in the independent thinker stakes. Ben Carson and Donald Trump do well. But poor Hillary Clinton doesn’t stand a chance against the onslaught of junk graphs, hyperbolic claims, and inane bumper-sticker cliches.
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Those who fall for the consensus argument are in no position to run a nation. Firstly it’s profoundly unscientific — we don’t vote for the laws of science; scientific theories are either true or not true regardless of opinions. Secondly, it only takes ten minutes of independent searching to find that there is no consensus among scientists as a broad group, anyway. There is a consensus among various definitions of certified climate scientists, but not among meteorologists , geoscientists and engineers or other hard science areas.
As I’ve said before, skeptics outrank and outnumber believers, they make planes fly, find mineral deposits, and walked on the moon. Believers produce climate models that don’t work. If climate scientists were good scientists, the first people they’d convince would be the physicists, mathematicians, geologists and engineers.
Most readers of skeptical blogs (who chose to respond to surveys and list their qualifications in comments^) have hard science degrees. Dan Kahan conducted a survey of 1,500 people and found people who knew more about maths and science were more likely to be skeptical. In other words, skeptics were better informed about science^. If we had to name a list of skeptics versus believers, the skeptics number 31,000, yet there is no list of named scientists who believe that comes close — let alone a list of 300,000 which would imply some truth to the statement that the science is settled, and the world’s scientists agree.
The famous 97% consensus is really a 0.3% consensus.
See real scientists review climate science with thousands of peer reviewed papers. NIPCC report.
Climate Depot, Pat
UPDATE: Even among certified climate scientists only 43% agree with the IPCC that man-made CO2 is the main driver of climate change.