Everyone has an opinion more important than yours.

I wonder... If you went to a doctor and he said you had cancer, you would go get a second opinion. As well you should. Even if the second doctor confirmed the diagnosis, you might go to a third. Hey, this is a big deal and you want to make sure that you are getting the right information. After the third doctor gives you the same answer, you would probably resign yourself to the truth of the situation. And, if you bumped into a friend of yours and mentioned your condition and they replied: "Yeah, I'm not convinced you have cancer" you would probably think them a bit of a nutjob. Let's suppose that (morbidly) you carry around an X-Ray or some such that shows your tumor, and you show it to your friend. "No, sorry, still not convinced." At this point, you would probably think them either delusional, in denial, or a moron. Why? Because you have evidence (the X-Ray), and multiple opinions from people who are experts in their fields and have spent a great number of years accumulating knowledge and experience in this area. Your friend (assuming he is not an oncologist) is just some guy who knows next to nothing about cancer (certainly compared to your series of doctors). You would, in fact, consider your friend's opinion to be near meaningless and without worth. You are comparing an opinion with an informed, educated opinion. Yet, somehow, people don't know the difference between the two when it comes to climate change. I was listening to BBC this weekend and there were some scientists (climatologists, environmental scientists, etc.) on discussing global warming. People called in and said that they weren't convinced that global warming was happening, and even less convinced that it was in any way due to humanity's behavior. None of these guys were scientists. None of them mentioned any kind of training in climate study. One or two tossed out a factoid here and there, but at best these were from the Encyclopedia Britannica. 2500 scientists (and, really, far more) are saying that man is causing global warming. And, somehow, these callers felt that they knew more. Someone out there will call my siding with the experts as: a. elitism (you know...anyone who is pro-higher-education must be an elitist) or b. blindly following authority (cause, y'know, listening to your doctor is a bad thing) I listen to my mechanic when I need my car fixed. I listen to my doctor when my back hurts. I listen to the C# programmer on my team when I need C# code written. Why is this any different? Oh, right, it isn't. Its just not much fun, and offends our self-importance. Tags:environment science global warming stupidity