that is absolutely a good attitude. Except that you seem willing not to check this denialist stuff you are posting, and I'm wondering whty the double standards. If your distrust of the government leads you automatically to think what comes from it is wrong you are just as controlled as someone who automatically believes - but in the opposite sense. And if you are thinking the climate denialist stuff on the web is necessarily unbiassed then you are not understanding people or the web.MSimon wrote: My policy is to not trust the government about anything. I do my best to check everything. It does not mean I'm free from error. I just have less.
That is not the way I analyse this stuff. I read an argument. Try to get to its core. Go read counterarguments. Try to get to their core. Compare the two and see which one comes out on top - based on verifible - or at least nearly verifiable - facts. If no resolution I go looking for more detail till I think i've got a handle on what is what. The key thing is to read both sides - and what they say about each other. Through several iterations. That nearly always exposes who is lying/leaving things out/an idiot. (Any or all).And I know you could pull out a raft of studies the way Tom does about CO2. But having studied the subject on my own I'm not moved.
I dig into the IPCC reports in detail for data and references on a very specific issue - though it is so wordy that google search is often a quicker way to get an answer. And I sometimes don't agree with the judgements in the IPCC reports - though they are a good review of the science - and I don't know that my judgements are better/worse than theirs except in very specific places.
As you probably guess from previous comments on this site we have a lot in common. I don't do belief. Neither theism nor atheism both of which - you are quite right - can be equally faith based. though I've know both claimed theists and atheists who so redefine theism/atheism that their steadfast claim in fact is vacuous and so I guess they don't have faith at all.Belief is the most powerful drug known to man. It is 99% addictive. I just happen to be the rare bird that has no faith. The drug does not move me. And lest we get into the religion question - I have no faith (conventionally) in God. Nor do I have faith in atheism.
Maybe a better way to look at it is what are you willing to question?. We all have things we are unwilling to question. I happen not to think that mine lie in the area of science, and my politics are a bit strange and don't push me one way or the other on the AGW debate. But there is also always how much time are we willing to put into working out things for ourselves. My meter for pseudo-science BS is pretty high. It can be triggered a little by some of the climate science canards. It is triggered heavily by the political statements made about climate science - in both directions - but then I can easily ignore politics and don't find it that interesting. It is blown off the scale by the climate denialist rubbish posted here which I've been arguing against.