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Persian Gulf Temperatures May Be At the Edge of Human Tolerance In 30 Years (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: According to a new climate study the Persian Gulf may become so hot and humid in the next 30 years that it will reach the threshold of human survivability. Ars reports: "Existing climate models have shown that a global temperature increase to the threshold of human survivability would be reached in some regions of the globe at a point in the distant future. However, a new paper published by Jeremy Pal and Elfatih Eltahir in Nature Climate Change presents evidence that this deadly combination of heat and humidity increases could occur in the Persian Gulf much earlier than previously anticipated."
New science is where everyone gets together and agrees that X is so, and henceforth X is so and no one is allowed to question X.
No one is asking for scientific debate to stop. I have yet to meet or talk to anyone who wants scientists to stop investigating the causes of global climate change in order to better predict its effects. This is about unqualified people, myself included, debating science they know nothing about.
Science is never settled, but that does not mean you should never act upon scientific knowledge because it might someday change. When determining which science to act upon, consensus is very important. In fact it is basically the only important thing. Average citizens and even policy makers could never be expected to understand the science enough to join either side of the debate. Accepting the consensus is the only sane choice in these instances.
Your exact argument has been made before. Science was supposed to do away with appeals to authority, lest your argument look like this:
No one is asking for theological debate to stop. I have yet to meet or talk to anyone who wants priests to stop investigating the scriptures in order to better interpret them. This is about unqualified people, myself included, debating religion they know nothing about.
Theology is never settled, but that does not mean you should never act upon theological understanding because it might someday change. When determining which theology to act upon, consensus is very important. In fact it is basically the only important thing. Average citizens and even policy makers could never be expected to understand religion enough to join either side of the debate. Accepting the consensus is the only sane choice in these instances.