> Is this an intentional straw man? No, you're not told to trust the people because they have a certain job title and trustworthiness.
Are you joking? Are you seriously making the claim that one of the persuasive approaches used in the "public realm" (media, discussions, etc) isn't that we should fight climate change because scientists have almost unanimously decided it is a real thing and we must do something?
If scientists are telling us something, we sure as hell should listen, at least two reasons being they are the experts on the subject (why wouldn't you listen to experts), and the subject is so immensely complicated that an average non-scientist person wouldn't have a chance of "looking at the data" and forming a reasonably correct opinion.
But now you are telling me no one is suggesting I listen to scientists? I could easily google thousands of articles/papers/blog posts/internet discussions where people are doing just that, but you are telling me no, that content does not exist.
What is it about this topic where otherwise reasonable people seem to go off the rails?
Your comment suggested that the title and reputation of a scientist was the fundamental reason you are "told" (in a somewhat conspiratorial big-brother fashion) to listen to them. And that - because sometimes mistakes are made - you can't trust an overwhelming consensus. That's obviously not true, and furthermore it's not the fundamental reason to listen: the fundamental reason is that it checks out. People have done gone and checked the papers/data. There have been multiple systematic reviews of other existing studies. It's not a single novel result. The massive consensus on this issue is the replication.
If you're not an expert and don't want to invest in becoming one, it's totally rationale to trust a network of experts to - roughly speaking - do their work properly. I'm sure you can find plenty of people advocating that. But my default position would be not to trust a single novel result, regardless of how smart or prestiged the authors were. Strong claims require strong evidence. I rarely hear any scientist or advocate saying otherwise.
Are you joking? Are you seriously making the claim that one of the persuasive approaches used in the "public realm" (media, discussions, etc) isn't that we should fight climate change because scientists have almost unanimously decided it is a real thing and we must do something?
If scientists are telling us something, we sure as hell should listen, at least two reasons being they are the experts on the subject (why wouldn't you listen to experts), and the subject is so immensely complicated that an average non-scientist person wouldn't have a chance of "looking at the data" and forming a reasonably correct opinion.
But now you are telling me no one is suggesting I listen to scientists? I could easily google thousands of articles/papers/blog posts/internet discussions where people are doing just that, but you are telling me no, that content does not exist.
What is it about this topic where otherwise reasonable people seem to go off the rails?