I'm curious why nobody seems to be jumping in on the skeptical side.... I know I'm not the only climate skeptic on here, because my comments on the topic seem to get upvoted, yet nobody ever seems to actually post in agreement, just upvote. Perhaps my fellow skeptics just avoid the topic in order to stay clear of the "no current politics" rule... although this introduces an asymmetry, in that people who hold the consensus view don't shy away from mentioning it (perhaps because they don't view it as being political), so you end up hearing from only one side.
If you squint at it just right, you could even view this as a microcosm of the climate change debate in general.
... the general take on climate change here.
Please read a little more before voting this down - I am not looking to initiate a debate on climate change - merely to understand what goes on when it is mentioned.
Disclosure: I am personally concerned about the impact of climate change in the medium term; I am largely convinced it is caused by human activity; I can get moralistic about it. I won't push any of that in this discussion.
I am a relatively recent habituee of the these fora, and mostly I find it full of entertaining, intelligent people talking thoughtfully about things that interest/concern me. I'm pleased - this is rare. Thanks, all.
I searched for mentions of climate change, and read some threads. I got the impression that a majority viewpoint here was that it is not an issue that concerns people here. I got the further impression that it is an issue which arouse feelings of irritation or worse in a significant minority of people here.
Neither of these impressions were strong enough to give me any useful level of certainty, though.
So I thought Will Newsome's wonderful Irrationality Game post might help me with an experiment.
I posted the following:
"Human activity is responsible for a significant proportion of observable climate change. 90% confidence"
I expected (in the topsy turvy context of that post) to get UPvoted, as I assumed a majority of viewers would disagree. I hoped to see some comments which would help clarify my weak impressions.
In fact, I got downvoted (-7), suggesting fairly significant agreement. At the same time, the comment is invisible (to my attempts) in the list of comments to the post, leading me to suspect that it has been removed by a moderator (perhaps on the grounds that CC is viewed as 'political'?).
Can anyone help me? I do not intend to use anything here as a platform for pushing an agenda - I'd just like to understand.