> if you are going to try to attack the credibility of the field of a hard science like climate science

But I'm not. In fact I said as much. If it'll stop you from fighting phantoms, I'll make it explicit: I'm quite certain anthropogenic climate change is real, and that climate science is broadly correct about it. Yet, not even physics is fully immune from such bias, according to Feynman: https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/264/timeline-of-meas...

(Though as the charts show, in physics it has a short half-life, at least for something as straightforward as the electron charge.)

What do you mean by these statements if not exactly to cast doubt on and paint the field of climate science and the consensus behind anthropogenic climate change as being the result of bias?

> affected by bias to such a degree

Implication that there is bias, and the degree to which is left up to the reader's imagination.

> the overall conclusion is wrong

What about the specifics of the conclusion, which specifics, what percentage of the assertions, 20%, 50%, 80%? This again allows the reader to fill in the blanks with their own biases which are likely far less rigorously tested than the conclusions of the field of climate science.

> it absolutely does occur that a whole field can be biased

This statement, on the topic of climate change and climate science, immediately following your above two statements, serves to further reinforce the idea that climate science is biased.

> the "independent verification by lots of other researchers" will cast unreasonable skepticism on results they dislike, while letting results they like pass with cursory examination.

The quotes around the independent verification of researchers serves to undermine their work and cast doubt on it. You then state they are unreasonable in their skepticism of results they "dislike", implying these are emotional decisions rather than empirical measurements of reality.

Of course, extremely ironic as the reader meant to consume this is of course the one actually looking for emotional reinforcement of their preconceptions, but in this framing gets to project that onto the scientists.

And yeah, "cursory exmination" of course in no way reflects the reality of the last several decades of climate science, but is added in as another unsubstantiated slight.

> case in e.g. social science

And then, the coup de grace, attempting to substitute the reputation of the famously soft and hard to replicate social sciences for climate science, in an attempt to equate the two and thus further degrade the perception of climate science.

> Implication that there is bias, and the degree to which is left up to the reader's imagination.

I would be shocked if there was zero bias - the field is staffed by humans, and has political implications. And no, I did not leave the degree of bias up to interpretation - I set an upper bound to it, that precludes global warming skepticism.

> What about the specifics of the conclusion

To date no field has been 100% correct in everything. I already told you I'm not a global warming skeptic - what do you want, for me to pretend climate science is infallible for the benefit of morons that want to twist my words?

> And then, the coup de grace, attempting to substitute the reputation of the famously soft and hard to replicate social sciences for climate science, in an attempt to equate the two and thus further degrade the perception of climate science.

On two separate occasions I explicitly wrote I believe climate science. Obviously my attempt at imparting a nuanced understanding of scientific fallibility is wasted on someone that doesn't even bother to read my posts. You want a PR statement aimed at reassuring the lowest common denominator that the scientists know what they're doing, not a discussion.

If this is how much you argue with someone who agrees with you, then, I don't know what to say. Good luck in life, man.

You must understand the net content and impact of your messaging, which is far from "Hey I'm just pointing out that humanity is fallible, apropos of nothing."

It's not -

"hey, we can argue about the best way to address climate change and the details of how it's going to play out"

it's -

"this entire field is biased" (you said "it's absolutely the case that entire fields can be biased"), the "independent verification of empirical data is actually untrustworthy and primarily motivated by personal dislike", "they make their scientific conclusions with cursory examinations", and "they're as reliable as the social sciences".

I'm sorry, but it beggars belief that you are not aware of what you're doing.

It's not the communication style of an engineer just trying to be technically correct, it's filled with subtle and not-so-subtle accusations and implications all driving in a single direction which is the discreditation of the entire scientific field.

So you think, but you're wrong. What really drives distrust in science is claims of infallibility and demands for total trust, so the only ones that remain expressing doubts are oil lobbyists and those whom they've convinced, hence your misidentification of me as one of them.

Let's take a small detour. In the show Downton Abbey, there's an episode where a character may be sick. Two doctors give their diagnoses. One says she's not sick, and that he's 100% certain. The other says he thinks he knows what illness she has, but he's not totally sure - despite knowing the patient better. Still he recommends treating her for that illness. They go with the first doctor, he turns out to have been wrong, and the patient dies.

Even the humanities and English literature graduates that wrote that show understood what you do not, that the person open about their uncertainties and faults is more trustworthy than the one claiming to be perfect. Not only is more trustworthy, but is the one that people will trust, that is why they gave that characteristic to the doctor they wanted the audience to side with - the likable permanent character, not the antagonizing guest character.

This is all a straw man, of course, as I've never said or even implied that scientists are infallible.

That said, to address your comment in some detail:

> What really drives distrust in science is claims of infallibility and demands for total trust

This is one hypothesis. Here's another -

If we look at COVID and the anti-vax movement in general, it seems apparent that a much greater driver of that distrust is grifters and kooks actively and profitably pushing emotionally satisfying misinformation. Ironically enough, they do this with far greater claimed certainty about the veracity of their conclusions than the doctors, with far less data to substantiate those conclusions.

This is pushed out to an audience which is desperately looking for explanations for the unexplainable like why their child got autism. Reasoning and nuance goes out the window and they latch onto anything that will give them a sense of certainty.

A second element of this, is that these conspiracy theories are specifically intended to stir up distrust of scientists, "educated elites", and public institutions, and to exploit the pre-existing distrust of the aforementioned that has been steadily cultivated by the right over decades.

Finally, in the case of COVID especially, we had a whole bunch of selfish motivations that were at play which resulted in people finding it expedient to believe anything that would align with their desires to do whatever they like without anyone telling them what they can and can't do (especially business owners whose financial incentives all aligned with not shutting down, and being in positions of power, they leaned into boosting this messaging).

The CDC and the medical field has for decades very clearly communicated the statistical nature of their specialty, the rate and severity of side effects, the uncertainty of prognoses and outcomes of treatments, etc etc. Quite painstakingly. There was no industrywide claim of infallibility, and yet here we are.

> Downton Abbey [...] the first doctor, he turns out to have been wrong,

Love Downton Abbey!

Climate scientists constantly communicate error bars around their measurements and the outcomes of climate change. Creating a model that predicts with any certainty how all the countless systems of the Earth will interact in such a dynamic process is insanely difficult, especially as numerous feedback cycles individually look poised to accelerate the whole process.

These many, many, many measurements and models all tend to converge around certain facts though, which leads to the probability of those being the case being as close to truth as science is capable of getting.

As "true" as 9.8 m/s^2, the heliocentric nature of our solar system, the spherical nature of our planet, the speed of light in a vacuum, plate tectonics, evolution, germ theory, etc. etc.

These truths are that the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere have been steadily rising since industrialization, that this is primarily driven by anthropogenic emissions, and that as the concentration of these gases increases, more energy from the sun will be trapped within our atmosphere resulting in a heating world.

This heating world is already, and will continue to, melt the ice caps, reducing the albedo of the poles as the darker water underneath is revealed and begins to absorb more of the sun's energy, accelerating the effect.

This heating of the world is again already, and will continue to, melt the permafrost which stores ~1.4 GT of methane, which is ~80x as potent a GHG as CO2, and whose release would represent a ~2x increase of the concentration in our atmosphere, again further accelerating the process.

This heating of the world is again already, and will continue to, lead to tropical forests like the Amazon beginning to emit more CO2 than they absorb, again further accelerating the process.

Etc. etc.

The consequences of all this are already, and will continue to, drive more and more extreme weather, with the 10 hottest years on record all happening in the last 10 years. This has negative consequences for food production, for the habitability of the equatorial regions, and will lead to mass migrations of people unless we think they will be content to just sit around and die, and thus destabilization of societies.

While we're on the topic of entertainment media another one came to my mind, it's called "Don't Look Up".

As opposed to your Downton Abbey example, the meteor turns out to be real, and it does hit the Earth, and everyone dies.

The reason humanity doesn't take this seriously and unite to address it is because there are countless predictable incentives to distrust the scientists and ignore the inconvenient truth of an incoming meteor. Financial incentives for the rich and powerful, engagement (and ultimately financial) incentives for the grifters and kooks pushing distrust of the scientists, a deep emotional desire in much of humanity to outright reject the horrors of this potential reality...

Anyway, not sure what made me think of that or how that's at all relevant here, but you should watch it if you haven't!