Only Dupes, Liars and Politicians Talk of "The Scientific Consensus" on Climate Change

This video records a debate on whether there is a need for action to reduce anthropogenic carbon emissions. The warmist, in the debate, economist Richard Denniss, sought chiefly to establish two points. First, that there is a scientific consensus that we face catastrophic climate disruption unless anthropogenic carbon emission (i.e., the burning of fossil fuels) is drastically curbed; and second, that those who question the "scientific consensus" are conspiracy theorists who, by implication, should be discredited if not forcibly silenced.

Galilei Galileo: Tried by the Inquisition for questioning the "Scientific Consensus."
Painting: Joseph Nicolas Robert-Fleury.

Both claims are dishonest and stupid.

The claim that there is a scientific consensus according to which the world faces an unacceptable risk of catastrophic climate warming due to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide is false not because of a lack of agreement among climate scientists, but because there never is, and never can be, a consensus among scientists on anything. And there is never a scientific consensus on anything because if there were, that would mark the end of science as it relates to the issue in question.

Yes, there are times when most scientists either accept, or do not challenge, a particular conclusion or theory, although that is certainly not true today of any general conclusion about climate change. But the scientific community never formally declares a "Scientific Consensus" about anything because it is axiomatic to science that there is no scientific fact or theory immune to challenge. And, in fact, to successfully challenge what was heretofore a generally accepted scientific theory constitutes the highest aspiration of every ambitious scientist.

When climate warmists talk about the scientific consensus they are, then, attempting, and with considerable success, to impose a gag on scientists who might challenge what is not the "scientific Consensus" but what the warmists hope to impose as the political consensus.

The attempt by climate warmists to tag those skeptical about climate warming as "conspiracy theorists" is a further deadly attack on the integrity and effectiveness of science. For it is precisely the unconventional view, the outsider's insight, the theory out of left field, on which the advancement of science depends. Not all seemingly far-out theories are correct, of course. Some, most in fact, are just far-out and wrong. But the near universal labeling of critics of a non-existent "Scientific Consensus" as "conspiracy nuts" who ought to be gassed, seems to mark, if not the end, at least the beginning of the end of the age of reason and with it the end of real science.