Matt -
I didn’t see a question.You seem to want skeptics to prove that something is correct, …
Good point. The question was whether or not my construction (to the extent that it was even understandable) was correct. The “question,” such as it was, was to ask whether or not there is a flaw in my thinking. Not to prove that something is correct, but to show me how it is incorrect.
This seems to cause you anguish. I attribute to you a belief like “The consensus has to be correct because there is no strongly supported alternative”,
That isn’t how I see it. It is interesting that no matter how many times I have to correct people in that regard, they still see my opinion to be one as you describe above.
My “belief” (more like general sense of how it works rather than a belief – I think that “belief” is too strong a word) is that absent hard proof otherwise, it isn’t irrelevant that a “consensus” of expert opinion says that a certain interpretation is probably correct. I don’t think a “consensus” is dispositive in any way – in the sense that you attribute such a belief to me. Because I can’t evaluate the science for myself, I have to look at it as playing the probabilities. It doesn’t help the “skeptical” cause when smart people such as yourself, who understand the science much better than I, make simple mistakes of attribution w/r/t my beliefs.
Here’s the thing. I read threads like the “Sky Dragon” thread, or posts up at WUWT where very smart and knowledgeable “skeptics” say that AGW is impossible, and then I read other “skeptics” say that I should disregard such arguments because they are outliers, and then the same “skeptics” turn around and say that I shouldn’t disregard their opinions simply because they are outliers. Do you see the problem?
In fact, I don’t disregard any opinion because it is an outlier. I look at the information available and make a best guess.
That all said – if you can figure out what I was attempting to say in the post (I’m not sure it makes any sense), I would appreciate it if you could either confirm the logic or explain where it goes wrong.