CLIMATE WATCH - How could so-called "climate sceptics" actually challenge the science of climate change?

I find Thomas Kuhn's analysis of how science proceeds is very useful - he describes science as a set of "paradigms". 

A scientific paradigm only begins to crumble if evidence accumulates that doesn't fit into it well, and this starts the process that Kuhn called "paradigm shift".


For a paradigm to change, researchers would have:


(a) produced plenty of new research-based evidence that does not fit the paradigm, and 

(b) offered an alternative paradigm that explains all the previous evidence plus the new evidence.

Until both (a) and (b) take place, a paradigm stands.


Plate tectonics came about in pretty much the way Kuhn describes - there were various older paradigms in geology, but progressively more and more evidence came along that did not fit into them. 

By the mid 1960s there was enough evidence to create the new plate tectonic paradigm and the old paradigms vanished almost instantly.


So where does AGW/climate science stand?

Have those who wish to challenge AGW and the general scientific position on climate change..... 

(a) produced plenty of new research-based evidence that does not fit the paradigm? and 

(b) offered an alternative paradigm that explains all the previous evidence plus the new evidence?

(a) No. (b) No.


What they do instead is grumble that they should be entitled to be listened to as if they had done all that, because they don't like what the evidence tells us.


The current scientific understanding of climate change (as summarised in IPCC reports) is accepted by every professional association of research scientists on Earth - in every field of science. Over 200 academies. Those associations represent the global scientific community of around 8 million research scientists.

There is no other scientific position on this matter, because no other "opinion" related to this matter is supported by evidence.

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