complexity and confusion, and the public's Need To Know

As part of my 'process' I find good YouTube lectures to listen to and make short notes, listed by time signature, both for learning and as a nice relief from trying to communicate with contrarians -  also hopefully as a study aid for the curious.  Usually I post them over at citizenschallenge.blogspot.

In any event, I've been going through Professor Alden Griffith recent talk at Wessesley College and he said something that tied right into this dialogue with Ridley and his basic implication that the scientific community of experts should not be trusted and that somehow there needs to be some civilian scrutinizing of scientific claims and details. {yea, Ridley you never said it in those exact words, but buddy, that's what I'm hearing you say.} 

29:50 - complexity and confusion. . . "public should not have to know everything about climate science, just as we shouldn't have to know everything about medicine. We have doctors, we have people that we trust to do this, …"

Prof. Alden Griffith on Climate Change as a Perfect Storm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj0kWcurtOI

WellesleyCollege

Published on Jan 14, 2013

Alden Griffith, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, Wellesley College

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We have a global scientific community of people who got into science because they wanted to understand how things really worked in the world around them.  They have dedicated their lives to learning about our planet and it's biosphere and the geophysical processes that operate our biosphere and drive our climate system. 

Throughout the scientific community we have smart, skeptical, ambitious people who's work get's looked at by a whole community of other smart, skeptical, ambitious people… experts in their respective fields.

Precision and accuracy and clarity of description is prized and failures get discovered and outed.
 The foundation of what climatologists know is huge and has been double checked thousands of times over, to say nothing of being supported by what we are observing throughout our planet.  And it continues to evolve with every season's data and experiences.

{or as I like to say: 
The consensus is not driven by scientists - 
the consensus is driven by the evidence}
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Sadly rather than learning from these experts and collectively taking action that would have helped us mitigate these changes,  our Republican/Libertarian leaders have conducted a war on science dependent on dirty tricks and misrepresenting down to Earth facts.

What a shame our leaders can't see past their own pocket books anymore.