@ordvic: The consensus is a belief in AGW man made global warming.
But how would Judy’s belief in AGW be inconsistent with her advocating skepticism of that belief, or for that matter skepticism of the stronger belief that AGW is harmful?
I advocate such skepticism myself. As a professional logician I am just as opposed to “squashing” it as Judy is. But I also advocate logical reasoning, and am strongly opposed to fallacies, as I would hope Judy is.
The latter happens on both sides of the debate. For example I’m very skeptical of the recent argument that “the apparent hiatus was not an actual climate trend. Instead, it was an artifact of incomplete and biased data.”
The argument is based on the difference between the new (blue) and old (red) analyses in this plot of global surface temperature since 1880.
Over the 20 years 1995-2014 the difference is way less than the noise in that signal, so I don’t see how it can turn a hiatus into a non-hiatus in any physically meaningful way. The argument is statistically fallacious.
That the difference lies in creating the blue curve for 1995-2014 by pushing the red curve very slightly down for 1995-2004 and equally slightly up for 2005-2014 raises the obvious question, which curve is the more biased, red or blue?
The only people who are likely to find that reasoning plausible are those who find the hiatus such an embarrassment that they would love to see it squashed (or straightened out), however dubious the means.
Yet my skepticism notwithstanding, I still expect that the hiatus will soon be shown to have ended in 2010, namely by global surface temperature spiking up by between 0.3 and 0.5 °C during 2011-2021.
Yet I can also readily accept it if it stays flat. It’s only an expectation, not a belief, just as I can readily accept snake eyes (two ones in craps) even though I don’t expect it.
Beliefs are longer term than expectations. If you rely on beliefs about your fellow poker players’ hands you will not do well in the long run, but belief in the laws of probability will serve you well.
My expectations about the future are based on my beliefs about physics, which have served me well in the past and therefore I have no reason to doubt them, at least thus far.
But physics isn’t mathematics or logic, which over the centuries have proved more robust than physics and in which I therefore believe even more strongly. Aristotle’s syllogisms have stood the test of time much better than Ptolemy’s epicycles, despite both logic and physics having made great strides during the past two millennia.
