You should tell NASA about this, they and nearly 200 worldwide scientific organizations will be flabbergasted they got it so wrong. Good thing we have a conservative news and opinion site set up by Tucker Carlson to set them straight.

http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

Right, so it must've been a total coincidence that when I asked them not to use MSG, I was fine? Time and time again. But if I ever forgot, I was screwed. I'm sure it was all in my head, though.

The fact is, MSG is harmful to some people. That is the scientific consensus according to this video description and content. The whole video is based on the false premise that people who are sensitive to MSG somehow claim that it's bad for everyone, and those deluded MSG haters need to be set straight. It's ridiculous.

@VoodooV

two dimensional thinking at its finest.

just because i point out that your commentary is tantamount to harassment does not automatically equal my condoning lantern or bobs oftentimes ridiculous commentary.

just because i am pointing out your hypocrisy does not mean i disagree with your actual comments.

if my fly was open or i had a huge booger hanging from my nose i hope you would pull me aside and point that out to me not stand from the bleachers,point and laugh.

your obsession with always being right has clouded your judgement in regards to what i am trying to point out to you.

is your ego so massive that the words of another should be so easily dismissed?each consecutive comment towards me is becoming more and more irrational and paranoid.

you mentioned calling me out on another thread.
yes you did.
which was a response to ME calling YOU out first.
and i smacked you down pretty handily.mainly due to the fact that you base your commentary towards me rife with presumption and conjecture.

which is exactly what you are doing here...again.

instead of hearing my words,you marginalize me in order to dismiss and ignore them.which is what all weak-minded people do in order to hold onto their own misconceptions.

bob does it.
lantern does it.
and so do you.

but never for a second deceive yourself into thinking i do not have the stones to say what needs to be said.your commentary reveals such an ignorance about who i am that i am literally laughing while i type this to you.

stop projecting voodoo.this persona you write about is not i,but rather you.

one last thing for your consideration (since we have totally hi-jacked this thread.sorry OP,please forgive).one of the main reasons i called you out was due to multiple private emails i received in regards to your current..and i quote one.."douchey attitude".

so the silence you hear is NOT due to agreement or consensus but rather many sifters fear confrontation.

i hold no such fear.

@Trancecoach - respectfully leaving this discussion based on the following:

"You are actually going a long way to make my point that those who are "believers" in climate change are missing the value and indeed necessity for ongoing skepticism"

I don't understand how you can say that after i was the person that investigated the source of the first link you gave out. You hadn't even bothered to look into it, so i did, and you can say with a straight face that i'm a "believer" who has lost his scepticism?

You didn't even check completely through the second lot of links you posted, because the one i did check (on YOUR ultimate recommendation) ended up being written by a guy who saw climate change as one of mankind's top 10 problems. You've shown yourself twice now to be using sources that you haven't even fucking looked at, evidenced by a half hour investigation by me! You didn't even put a half hour into it!?

I remain open to evidence that climate change is not a man-made concern, or that it is not a concern. I'm not going to sit here and relay exactly how each of us think the scientific community works. You can read how it works on the scientific method and scientific consensus pages i linked earlier, anyone can. It's not open for debate; there is an overwhelming majority of scientific evidence in favour and there is not enough and not significant enough scientific evidence against. It isn't a coincidence that ~99% of the research points in one direction, and it isn't some conspiracy.... that isn't how science works. It's not perfect, a lot of shit science gets through because it's so hard to read and so relatively few people want to trawl through shite, but that's why it's better to look at the consensus - what is the AVERAGE opinion of ALL the clever people? It's a community that i consider incorruptible - because even if you paid off 10 research centres, there's still millions of individual scientists, individual institutions, so many people dedicated to keeping it pure because we know that's the only way we get the most from it. And ... the science and maths speaks for itself, the models are not "just models" as the moron associated with your latest link says. They are the best representations we have and they do represent parts of physical reality, and by using carefully considered techniques we can extract information about things. The alternative is to consult a Ouija board!?

By the way, nice 240 page pdf document for me to refer to. I didn't ask for a single link, i asked for a single point about which we were in disagreement... usually papers are cited to reinforce a point. You don't just cite something and go "there you go, read all of that, whatever you see that agrees with me; that's what i'm talking about!"

My doctorate is in psychology -- a social science, which includes coursework in epistemology. I am also the executive director of a peer reviewed psychology Journal which incorporates quantitative, qualitative, and mixed method methodologies.

If science was driven purely by consensus, than the upending of long-held scientific understanding (as achieved by the likes of Galileo, or Darwin, or Einstein -- who, incidentally, upended some theories about how something as "self-evident" as gravity works -- in more notable ways and by lesser known scientists in still significant ways) would never come about. Science is not practiced by "votes," whereby the majority determines what theories are most accurate. Rather, evidence (whether it be rationally deduced, rationally induced, empirically demonstrated, or hermeneutically interpreted) serves as the basis for scientific progress, whether the majority of scientists agree with it or not.

(Climate change, itself, is rationally deduced, since empirical models of the earth are so difficult if not impossible to design, let alone run controlled trials.)

You are actually going a long way to make my point that those who are "believers" in climate change are missing the value and indeed necessity for ongoing skepticism in the scientific literature (rather than the name-calling and vilification that constitutes much of the "OMG! Climate Change!" discourse of late). That point, along with illuminating some of the citations I linked to above, is the purpose of my comment -- and not to argue (or name-call or "debate" as many on the sift waste their time doing).

I do concur that the manner in which I posted the links may not have been "fair," and so I apologize for that, but the content of the links themselves raise significant questions as to the unilateral "belief" in "OMG! [andropogenic] Climate Change!" I encourage anyone who is seriously interested in the scientific basis for skepticism around such a belief, to consider reviewing the literature cited in those links before arriving at an incontrovertible conclusion.

But in light of your request for a single link, I recommend you visit the NPCC's website and perhaps attend, specifically, to their literature about temperature changes (PDF), which I believe serve as valid refutations of the literature upon which the climate change "believers" tend to base their adrenal-freakouts.

I think your efforts are commendable, but doomed to fail. Trance is not interested in learning, and when you teach him something he can't find a crazed, wrong link to discount your knowledge with, he'll simply ignore it and move on to more and more infantile argument. He recently became my second ignore.
I am glad you called him out on his doctorate in underwater basket weaving, unfortunately for us all it does not help him understand science in the least, or the scientific method, but somehow convinces him that it does.
EDIT: Oh, "doctorate in Social 'science'", which he must mistakenly believe is a true science and not a misnomer.
I see he continues with his intentional miss-reading and/or miss-quoting, claiming you said purely consensus is the ONLY way science progresses, not that it's the way that progression is accepted by the scientific community. Me thinks this miss-understanding is an intentional miss-statement in order to continue his 'debate' by constantly changing either his own, or your stance on the subject.
I also noted the passive aggressive (and terrible English) statement " the manner in which I posted the links may not have been "fair," ", to me implying you just couldn't assimilate that much information, not conceding that it was all an attempt at an overwhelming avalanche of BS propaganda.
Kudos on your reasoned, patient approach. I ran out of patience with the kindergarten argument style and quit him.

@Trancecoach holding a doctorate doesn't make you capable of understanding the scientific literature. If you held a bachelor's degree in one of the three sciences you'd stand a lot better chance of being able to understand the literature than someone who had a doctorate in say Art History. I would actually refer back to the Dunning Kruger effect and suggest that holding an unrelated qualification might lead you to overestimate your abilities.

And for someone who says that they *are* capable of understanding the scientific literature (and therefore the scientific method and approach), you dismiss "scientific consensus" as not being "scientific evidence". I don't understand what you mean here, but i think that's because you don't understand what scientific proof is.

I think it's a fundamental mistake that you're making. Scientists propose theories. Those theories that most accurately describe the situation and are most rigourously investigated are the ones that are accepted as being the case, and when things are found that are not correct, adjustments are made to the theory or other theories are proposed. There is never ever, ever.... EVER.. absolute evidence of anything in the way in which you request it, and that's your fundamental error, and stems from you not understanding the scientific method.

We have a lot of scientific consensus about gravity, but we do not have "scientific evidence" in the way you describe it. The evidence is ALL of the science that is done, ALL of the experiments ALL of the conclusions, positive and negative, and the consensus of the scientific community is reached and refined based on that research and ongoing research. There is no one document anywhere that constitutes "proof" that gravity is how we think it is. Not even all of the documents do that. They merely indicate to us what is most likely to be happening according to all of the knowledge and ingenuity that we've built up over the years.

I don't appreciate the scatter gun method you've used by posting all those links. You said in your latest post here that people try to confuse the issue by redirecting your request for "evidence" - the type that doesn't exist - towards other issues that you deem contentious. Yet you have almost drowned me in what appears to be about 15 different links to pages that seem to show singular examples of individuals that deny climate change. (Again, there are so many, and so many quotes, and no actual specification of what you are disagreeing with me about, that i can't rightly assess any of them.)

My point here is twofold - 1) don't try to be confusing like you accuse your opponents of, i.e. throwing as many links as possible to extend the argument to other points and 2) if that isn't what you were doing, could you perhaps condense your 15 links and selected quotes into a smaller point; that point being what it is about my previous posts you disagreed with?

Here are my points for you, simplified:
1) Scientific consensus does not mean "THIS IS HOW THINGS ARE" - it means that, on balance, according to everything we know and the opinions of those that are in the know, this is how we think things are until we know better.
2) There is no such thing as "scientific evidence" in the way you use the term; the only absolute proof is the one Descartes spoke about; the only thing you can know for sure is that your consciousness exists.
3) It is very easy to be misled by articles such as the one you linked from "the libertarian republic" website. This is also true of the last link you recommended for my research; you used that book to support your opposition to my assertion that human-caused climate change is not a matter of debate in the scientific community. Yet the same author was involved in the Copenhagen Consensus which lists as 6th most worthy of investigation (for the benefit and future of mankind), i quote; "R&D to Increase Yield Enhancements, to decrease hunger, fight biodiversity destruction, and lessen the effects of climate change"

I think that out of courtesy you should select one link which backs up whatever it is that you wish to refute, because it's not a good use of my time to have to go through each individual link, find out what you disagree with me about, and then spend time looking into it.

So, we disagree on one of the following:
1) The scientific consensus is that human-caused climate change is real, and that consensus represents the best of our current understanding as a species.
2) "Proof" in the sense you use it doesn't exist, the correct term is scientific evidence. The more evidence and the more convincing it is, the more firm the belief in a theory.
3) The article you linked from the libertarian website was unfairly representing its argument in relation to the paper it was referring to.

Please let me know. Remember - nothing is "beyond scepticism" in your words. I am sceptical about everything, including gravity, which i have an incredible amount of evidence for. However i am still sceptical about our understanding of it - i am always looking for differences. That doesn't mean that our understanding isn't the best one we have, and we should use it for our own advantage and safety.

I also note that you seem loathe to have a proper discussion with me. Our discussion could have been either about the scientific method or about the article you linked, but to throw all these links at me makes me feel you're unwilling or incapable of challenging your own opinion based on evidence. You don't even refer to the assessments of the article that i offered; you immediately discarded the article from your argument and linked me to other people that may or may not be misrepresenting the argument.

@dannym3141, I understand that you are "stepping out of the debate," but, for your edification, I'll respond here... And, for the record, I am not "funded" by Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Solar, or Big Green. Nor am I a professor of climate or environmental science at a State University (and don't have a political agenda around this issue other than to help promote sound reasoning and critical thinking). I do, however, hold a doctorate and can read the scientific literature critically. So, in response to what climate change "believers" say, it's worth noting that no one is actually taking the temperature of the seas. They simply see sea levels rising and say "global warming," but how do they know? It's a model they came up with. But far from certain, just a theory. Like Antarctica melting, but then someone finds out that it's due to volcanic activity underneath, and so on.

And also, why is the heat then staying in the water and not going into the atmosphere? So, they then have to come up with a theory on top of the other theory... So the heat is supposedly being stored deep below where the sensors cannot detect it. Great. And this is happening because...some other theory or another that can't be proven either. And then they have to somehow come up with a theory as to how they know that the deep sea warming is due to human activity and not to other causes. I'm not denying that any of this happens, just expressing skepticism, meaning that no one really knows for sure. That folks would "bet the house on it" does not serve as any proof, at all.

The discussion on the sift pivots from "global warming" to vilifying skeptics, not about the original skepticism discussed, that there is catastrophic man-caused global warming going on. Three issues yet to be proven beyond skepticism: 1) that there is global warming; 2) that it is caused by human activity; 3) that it's a big problem.

When I ask about one, they dance around to another one of these points, rather than responding. And all they have in response to the research is the IPCC "report" on which all their science is based. And most if not all published "believers" say that the heat "may be hiding" in the deep ocean, not that they "certainly know it is" like they seem to claim.

They don't have knowledge that the scientists who are actively working on this do not have, do they? It's like the IRS saying, "My computer crashed." The IPCC says, "The ocean ate my global warming!"

Here are some links worth reading:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304636404577291352882984274

And, from a different rebuttal: "Referring to the 17 year ‘pause,’ the IPCC allows for two possibilities: that the sensitivity of the climate to increasing greenhouse gases is less than models project and that the heat added by increasing CO2 is ‘hiding’ in the deep ocean. Both possibilities contradict alarming claims."

Here's the entire piece from emeritus Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT, Dr. Richard Lindzen: http://www.thegwpf.org/richard-lindzen-understanding-ipcc-climate-assessment/

And take your pick from all of the short pieces listed here: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/08/is-gores-missing-heat-really-hiding-in-the-deep-ocean/

And http://joannenova.com.au/2013/09/ipcc-in-denial-just-so-excuses-use-mystery-ocean-heat-to-hide-their-failure/

"Just where the heat is and how much there is seems to depend on who is doing the modeling. The U.S. National Oceanographic Data Center ARGO data shows a slight rise in global ocean heat content, while the British Met Office, presumably using the same data shows a slight decline in global ocean heat content."

http://www.arizonadailyindependent.com/2013/10/03/the-ocean-ate-my-global-warming-part-2/#sthash.idQttama.dpuf

Dr. Lindzen had this to say about the IPCC report: "I think that the latest IPCC report has truly sunk to a level of hilarious incoherence. They are proclaiming increased confidence in their models as the discrepancies between their models and observations increase."

http://www.arizonadailyindependent.com/2013/10/01/the-ocean-ate-my-global-warming-part-1/#sthash.oMO3oy6X.dpuf

So just as "believers" can ask "Why believe Heartland [financier for much of the NPCC], but not the IPCC," I can just as easily ask "Why should I believe you and not Richard Lindzen?"

"CCR-II cites more than 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers to show that the IPCC has ignored or misinterpreted much of the research that challenges the need for carbon dioxide controls."

And from the same author's series:

"Human carbon dioxide emissions are 3% to 5% of total carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, and about 98% of all carbon dioxide emissions are reabsorbed through the carbon cycle.

http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/1605/archive/gg04rpt/pdf/tbl3.pdf

"Using data from the Department of Energy and the IPCC we can calculate the impact of our carbon dioxide emissions. The results of that calculation shows that if we stopped all U.S. emissions it could theoretically prevent a temperature rise of 0.003 C per year. If every country totally stopped human emissions, we might forestall 0.01 C of warming."

http://www.arizonadailyindependent.com/2013/08/01/climate-change-in-perspective/#sthash.Dboz3dC5.dpuf

Again, I have asked, repeatedly, where's the evidence of human impact on global warming? "Consensus" is not evidence. I ask for evidence and instead I get statements about the consensus that global warming happening. These are two different issues.

"Although Earth’s atmosphere does have a “greenhouse effect” and carbon dioxide does have a limited hypothetical capacity to warm the atmosphere, there is no physical evidence showing that human carbon dioxide emissions actually produce any significant warming."

Or Roger Pielke, Sr: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/20/pielke-sr-on-that-hide-and-seek-ocean-heat/

Or Lennart Bengtsoon (good interview): "Yes, the scientific report does this but, at least in my view, not critically enough. It does not bring up the large difference between observational results and model simulations. I have full respect for the scientific work behind the IPCC reports but I do not appreciate the need for consensus. It is important, and I will say essential, that society and the political community is also made aware of areas where consensus does not exist. To aim for a simplistic course of action in an area that is as complex and as incompletely understood as the climate system does not make sense at all in my opinion."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/meteorologist-lennart-bengtsson-joins-climate-skeptic-think-tank-a-968856.html

Bengtsson: "I have always been a skeptic and I believe this is what most scientists really are."

What Michael Crichton said about "consensus": "Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus."

Will Happer on the irrelevancy of more CO2 now: "The earth's climate really is strongly affected by the greenhouse effect, although the physics is not the same as that which makes real, glassed-in greenhouses work. Without greenhouse warming, the earth would be much too cold to sustain its current abundance of life. However, at least 90% of greenhouse warming is due to water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide is a bit player. There is little argument in the scientific community that a direct effect of doubling the CO2 concentration will be a small increase of the earth's temperature -- on the order of one degree. Additional increments of CO2 will cause relatively less direct warming because we already have so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it has blocked most of the infrared radiation that it can. It is like putting an additional ski hat on your head when you already have a nice warm one below it, but your are only wearing a windbreaker. To really get warmer, you need to add a warmer jacket. The IPCC thinks that this extra jacket is water vapor and clouds."

Ivar Giaever, not a climate scientist per se, but a notable scientist and also a skeptic challenging "consensus": http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8786565/War-of-words-over-global-warming-as-Nobel-laureate-resigns-in-protest.html

Even prominent IPCC scientists are skeptics, even within the IPCC there is not agreement: http://www.climatedepot.com/2013/08/21/un-scientists-who-have-turned-on-unipcc-man-made-climate-fears-a-climate-depot-flashback-report/

And for your research, it may be worth checking out: http://www.amazon.com/The-Skeptical-Environmentalist-Measuring-State/dp/0521010683

@A-Winston @lantern53

Here is another fantastic wikipedia article that i highly recommend you read closely.

Note that not a single scientific institution is in any doubt about the points made on that page about climate change. The last group that rejected any of the points (the American Association of Petroleum Geologists no less; one of the most biased-looking on the page and in clear opposition to the consensus) had to, in 2007, accept that the evidence was making them look foolish, and took a "non-committal" stance... whatever that means. A very unscientific conclusion to make - the conclusion should state what the results stated and most importantly be free of opinion. For example you'd get roasted alive for writing "95% probability, so it's quite likely!" in a university science report - italicised bit is clearly an opinion, and is scientifically meaningless.

Read the bit about consensus. Read the bit about peer reviewed research being conducted by lecturers and students at universities around the world.

I'm genuinely trying to help you understand how scientific consensus works, please give this a look. If you're worried about wikipedia you can check the citations, i've given it a look and the sources look reliable, and you can let me know if you've got any doubts about any and i'll take a look for you and discuss it with you in private if you like. Genuinely want to help if i can.

@A-Winston @lantern53

Have you ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect?

I'll simplify it for you - those who are not well educated in a subject greatly overestimate their ability at the subject, because they don't know all of the things that they don't know.

Those who are better educated in a subject greatly underestimate their ability at the subject, because they know how complicated it is.

Now you two don't know about science, and that's ok - that's not an insult and i don't want any of this to be insulting. But it is meant to be a reminder that you are talking about one of if not the most technical and complicated abstract subjects that we as a species pursue. If you don't even understand the "scientific method" (a distinct term) and how the "scientific community" (another distinct term) works and comes to consensus, how can you possibly hope to decipher fact (science) from fiction (propaganda)?

I keep having to post this, but i'll do it again. The scientific community is made up of all kinds of people such as university lecturers and students (yes, your kids might be part of the community), amateur scientists, people at research institutions.... anyone who cares enough to approach things methodically and systematically, anyone interested in finding out as much as we possibly can about everything we can. Real science does not get paid based on results - the funding is provided for the research and the research finds whatever it finds. You can't lie about science, because other anal bastards (far worse than me) are just waiting to find something wrong with it and pillory it. That's how the scientific community works, it's like internet comments only worse. You can't get away with doing bad science for long.

Most people in scientific research do not have a lot of money, do you understand that? I can tell you right now - i contribute to scientific papers and such, so that makes me part of the scientific community. I'm just a post-grad student living on a student loan and doing something that i enjoy. My lecturers make a living, but they are not well-off by any means. We also suffer tax when politicians take our evidence and twist it in front of our faces. And we're left standing here, exasperated, wondering why you'd listen to non-experts over experts. If your doctor said you had diabetes, you wouldn't ask a politician to confirm it? If you want a scientific opinion, consult the scientific community.

I would love you to ask yourself the following question; "What do i really know about the scientific community and the scientific method?" Because if you took half an hour one day to go to an accredited university and ask the science department about how science works, how consensus is formed, and what makes good scientific practice, you'd be able to rid yourselves of these myths that somehow all scientists (i.e. average people, doing scientific research for the sake of science) are in some kind of club or gang or being paid to say that humans are causing climate devastation. The reason the majority of people say that is because the science speaks for itself and is not open to interpretation. The facts are facts.

Are you really thinking this through?

I want to show you one final thing, and it comes from the wikipedia page on Scientific method (which i recommend you read to avail yourself about which you speak, please don't speak from ignorance).

"The chief characteristic which distinguishes the scientific method from other methods of acquiring knowledge is that scientists seek to let reality speak for itself, supporting a theory when a theory's predictions are confirmed and challenging a theory when its predictions prove false."

The science speaks for itself, and i recommend you start listening to real scientists. Why prefer the opinion of a few individuals who are either flawed in their scientific reasoning or flat out being paid to lie? The scientific community is in full agreement.

Edit: Sorry for the long post, but you're talking about something you don't understand and it exasperates me. You wouldn't come here and talk about the details of internal medicine, but you're quite happy to tell a scientist, to his face, that he doesn't know science.

@Trancecoach - they respond in literature all the time. A scientist's response is to prove it, scientifically. They do, and are, all the time. But most people do not understand science and those that do still find scientific papers daunting and difficult to follow. People like the two i mentioned above, they don't have a hope in hell of understanding the source of the information, and they sadly look to the wrong people to explain it to them.

Consensus says MY BAD. Sorry nock.

This seems to be a semantic argument, much like the argument that evolution is "just a theory", you're saying it's "just a consensus".

And yes, a consensus for layman is just a majority agreement, and this does not make it reality. Lots of majorities believe really stupid shit.

A scientific consensus, however, is not just an agreement or a majority opinion. It is what the evidence points to. If there is no conflicting evidence, you will get a scientific consensus that it means a certain thing. Evidence is largely not up for much interpretation, unlike opinions.

It used to be that the consensus was that the earth was flat, because the only evidence we had was "it looks pretty flat", but more evidence invalidates that and so that hypothesis fails the evidence.

So far the evidence seems to indicate that that globe is warming and that people are at least partially causing it. There hasn't been solid evidence presented to counter it, save for flimsy opinions ("I think the sun is doing it!" etc.)

A consensus is not reality, as I've already stated.

I don't care what people believe about global warming. My problem is that when govt's believe we can do something about it, they begin to take my private property i.e. money, to fight it, when gov'ts do little but waste huge amounts of money and increase our debt.

Do whatever you want about global whatever, just don't ask me to believe that what you do will accomplish anything.

Scientific consensus is not a coalescing of mere opinions, but of careful analysis and experimentation by peer review. It is not the same thing as a bunch of people getting together in a room and saying "yeah I guess that's how it is".

You think scientists feel good about coming to the conclusion that the world is warming? Of course they don't, but it's the conclusion they have drawn. And we should listen to them, because they know much more about it than you or I ever will.

NdGT has made his position on AGW clear many times. It's real, it's happening and it's man made.

And centuries ago, the religious and cultural consensus was that the earth was flat, which was then disproved by scientific evidence. These days, science is peer-reviewed, so a large part of it is consensus. Just not the consensus of idiots on fox or morons who read right wing conspiracy blogs. It is the consensus of educated scientists who have researched the topic.

The simple fact is, if you don't believe in AGW, then you don't believe in the scientific method.