But none of those areas are the ones where people get worked up about misinformation. Unless you have been told there is a "consensus" about things like COVID, vaccines and climate change, where there most certainly isn't?
Not commenting on covid or vaccines, not my field, but climate change for one has pretty much been established to a great deal of accuracy (that climate change is man made)
Even someone like Senate leader Mitch McConnell isn’t denying it anymore. Research is still ongoing to what extend we are going to be impacted.
So, even if someone is denying climate change or reading misinformation, it doesn’t change that man made climate change is here, and what its causes are.
So yeah, there is scientific consensus in that area on the broad perimeters.
Now if you believe something different, that just goes against what we already established!
"Man is changing the climate" is a very weak statement if taken literally, and not really what people mean by the term climate change. Of course man has some sort of impact on the atmosphere, as we do on all aspects of our environment.
Once you get into questions like, by how much is it changing, are those changes a big deal or not that serious, by how much does it really affect the weather, even what the actual history of global temperature is, there is a lot of disagreement even amongst scientists, although of course given the tiny size and cliquey nature of many academic fields, criticism from outside the field must always be considered as well.
Those are pretty much already answered, and by many people. The Wikipedia link goes into that :) Data suggests we are currently looking at 2 degrees temperature change as a global average.
While everyone is free to come up with different answers, there isn’t anything credible at the moment.
A friend of mine programs climate models based on latest mathematical insights and data. For 10 years he would put his hand in a fire that it is happening and it will be bad.
Point by point :
How much is changing? 2 degrees hotter on average.
How does it affect weather? More outliers such as the recent heat wave in the NW of USA.
Is it a big deal? Yes, because it unbalances a lot of eco systems and our ability to cope with it.
History of global temperature? Has been measured for hundreds of years now and we can deduce temperatures before that.
There is a lot of disagreements between scientists? No there isn’t (97% banks on man made climate change)
Clique nature of academic fields? That’s an entirely different topic and doesn’t change the data.
