> [T]here is an infinity of ways of having doubts on the main stream views and that leaves a lot of freedom.
Yes, but let’s not forget the power of recursive definitions: Suppose that somebody, somewhere claims P. Here is how to be skeptikal about P:
/1. How do you know that P?
/2. Yes, but are you sure?
/3. Fair enough, but can we call this P settled?
/4. You say it’s settled, but how could P ever be settled in science?
/5. And do we have an engineer-level derivation that P?
/6. What would Feynman say of those who believe that P?
/7. Perhaps P, but how does that matter for the price of butter?
/8. Ok, it matters, but what if P was a good thing?
/9. And what can we do about it anyway?
There might be ways to simplify this algorithm by adding some recursion.
This could help alleviate the Procrustean beds between questions 3 and 4, and questions 4 and 5. Just try to satisfy two skeptics, one asking 3 and the other asking 4, or one asking 4 and the other 5. And this might explain why skeptiks are acting as if they were not part of the same camp. We might be lukewarm to add this other question:
/10. Of course P, but should we make sure that those who hold P ought to be squeaky clean?
This might not belong to the skeptkal audit, only to the one that raises deontological concerns. A variation is the question raison methodological concerns:
/11. Of course P, but should we make sure that those who hold P got to the result in some squeaky clean way?
Both 10 and 11 gets conflated most of the times. These are good questions. In fact, they are so good that they create a never ending audit.
If I forgot questions, I’d like to know.
On the face of it, I believe this covers much of my experience in climate blogland.
[NB. I would be inclined to add “And what about Q?”, but I don’t want to renumber everything.]
