GST,
Yes. Politics on this topic keeps changing. A few years ago US politicians hated global warming, now they love climate change and see opportunities...
However, as Skeeter is pointing out, concensus among scientists does not mean something is true, although that may be the best guess we have at the moment.
Of all the climate scientists looking at the data of global warming, maybe less than 10 of them fully understand the relationships between all the variables that affect the trend. Rest of the scientists just go with whatever the prevailing viewpoint is and publish accordingly.
I spent a decade in environmental engineering field (not global warming) and interacted with many top researchers. Most scientists are very good at their narrow disciplines, however, they are not good at predicting much outside their own special areas.
And by the nature of the beast, any prediction of global warming is determined by building models that depend on assumptions that are derived from multiple disciplines including physics, chemistry, fluid dynamics, biology, earth sciences, thermodynamics, kinetics, and empirical data on the properties of various compounds, and atmospheric measurements. Then you combine that with nice mathematics, and you have very few people who understand all the components well.
Now, as you say, there might be the Occam's razor principle operating here, with the data pointing very clearly towards the use of fossil fuels being the primary cause of global warming. And I have not studied it enough to decide either way. But neither have politicians and decision makers studied the problem, they just swing for and against based on their political agenda.
-Arun
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