Angry old white Australian male and proud of it!, page-54

Actually the Dunning Kruger effect is a scientific concept that was discovered by gathering data, formulating a hypothesis and testing independently. The evidence was then published so that others could challenge it, test it and disprove it. The evidence for the bias withstood the ability of every expert in psychology who wanted to challenge it and it became an accepted evidence based principle.

Even now the concept is there for anyone to challenge with new evidence or a reinterpretation of the old evidence and students are taught to do that from their first days of undergraduate study.

The concept of anthropogenic climate change has gone through the same rigorous process. The evidence for it has not only withstood thousands of challenges by experts testing it around the world but it has grown stronger. This process is ongoing.

Scientist don't like to agree with each other. If an idea can be scientifically disproven and a new idea discovered any scientist would do it in a second because it is their job, and if they could disprove something like anthropogenic climate change it would absolutely make their career.

Science, regardless of the specialty, is pursuit of objective testable knowledge. It's rigorous and provides humanity's best understand of the world.

Folk wisdom, the knowledge gained by people working the land is just too subjective and small in scale to provide a reliable alternative.

A farmer may know his land very well. He'll obviously notice the floods and the droughts come and go over the years. He'll notice hot days and cold days. This is a normal part of life and often this knowledge will be passed down from generation to generation.

A scientist will look at this in Australia and notice that droughts on the East Coast almost always occur during an El Niño pacific weather pattern, inland floods always occur during La Niña weather patterns, and average weather occurs during a neutral pattern. They can then look at what is happening now with a prolonged East Coast drought during a neutral weather patter and say that hasn't happened in the past 150 years, so this isn't a normal drought cycle in the way that we've ever experience it. They'll monitor and test their new prediction for the weather as new data come in.

From history we can tell if we move into an El Niño weather patter it will get even drier and hotter on the east coast. If it stays neutral the drought is likely to continue as is and if we move into a LA Nina it should rain.

So now instead of our farmer having dry periods, a large number of average years and some flood years they can expect dry years, drier years and some wet years (we don't know if / how bad it could flood during these periods.

There's no possible way for a farmer to adapt to that kind of change without someone collecting and analysing the data from a bigger perspective. We can also analyse this data from across the world and see that it is happening everywhere.

Now to anthropogenic climate change. We know that while there are plenty of other sources of CO2, the thing that has changed (and this is backed up and continuously retested by scientists around the world) is that we are producing more CO2 than the natural recycling systems can handle. (partly through drastic increases in industrialisation and partly through destruction of parts of the recycling system).

It's basically like if you had a bucket with a hole in the bottom. If you pour one litter of water a minute into the bucket and the hole let's one litre of water out of the bucket a minute the water level stays the same and everything is balanced. If you start pouring water in at 1.1 litres a minute the bucket will fill up because the balance is out of whack.

Global CO2 emissions are similar. Fossil fuel emissions only make up a fraction of CO2 in the atmosphere but it never used to be there and now that it is so it increases in the atmosphere because the natural carbon sinks (oceans, trees, mangroves, etc) cannot handle any more.

We know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, ie it traps heat. We've know that for well over 100 years. Without any CO2 we'd be an ice planet, the right amount the climate we've always known and with too much we start getting hotter fast (for the climate).

C02 levels have changed throughout history and have led to climate change. We've examined the ice cores that prove this. Historically these changes have been before humans, or have posed significant challenges to our existence. In the past we've had small enough populations that we could move to where the climate was better. There are now 7bn people on the planet and we rely on a stable climate to keep them all alive.

The difference this time is that we're causing it. We know that because we can do the maths, work out the natural sources of CO2, subtract the amount of C02 the earth can use and add the amount we produce and realise that the increases in the atmosphere match the surplus we're creating. It's complicated maths, but it's solid. We know this because experts have independently tested it around the world.

I understand there is a tendency for people to reject science and the "elite" when it doesn't match what you perceive. It's pretty natural to do that.

We all like to think that our learned experience is valid and frankly science is not presented well to people. People will often say this is true because scientist say it is. We use science as an authority figure without explaining how this knowledge was obtained. In part because ground breaking science is often extremely complicated and specialised and most people just don't have the knowledge base to wrap their heads around it and also a little ambivalence towards the general public. Scientists publish their work for each other to read, test and critique. Their careers rely on this process and you don't get big promotions for explaining your discoveries to the public.

It takes roughly ten years after high school for most scientists who work on research to finish studying. To complete a PHD they need to contribute something new or develop a new understanding of something in their field. After that ten years they can start their "apprenticeship" or what's called a postdoc.

After 23 years of learning they are reading to start doing their job under supervision.

The scientist you hear from on issues like this have been through that process. They are the elite (being extremely good at something should not be dismissed) researchers of our society. Discovering objective truth is what they do.

When they say it's going to get hotter because of what we are doing they should not be dismissed because you've experience a hot Sumer a few times.

You are right in one way, there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is just acquired information. Wisdom is being able to tell the difference between a personal anecdote and objective understanding and attributing the correct value to each one.