Dr David Evans claims new climate change discovery

[Aractus]

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Oh look Chuck, anyone who challenges the established scientific theory is viewed as a crackpot - think Semmelweis for example. The interesting thing about Semmelweis that people often ignore is that he didn't instruct hist students to wash their hands - they already did that. He specifically said soap and water was not good enough to remove the (invisible) cadaverous particles that he hypothesised were poisoning patients in the maternity ward, and that the medical students needed to wash their hands with a chlorinated lime solution instead!! I'll bet you don't wash your hands in chlorinated-lime, Chuck. It was around 30 years until germ theory was developed and accepted, and even then I can point you to scientific peer-review papers that urge the need for caution when assuming generalisability (applying to other medical conditions what has been 'proven only of some'). We look back on them now - and most people see a one-sided point of view that shows the scientific establishment resisting change. OF COURSE THEY RESIST CHANGE! That's what they're supposed to do. But challengers are supposed to be able to present evidence that can advance science - science only advances through falsification.

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While some visionaries have been mistakenly treated as crackpots, the world would grind to a complete stop and then go off the rails while reversing if every crackpot is accorded the consideration given to visionaries.

You completely missed my point. Semmelweis WAS a crackpot. He was not a visionary - not at all. However the theory of the age - miasma theory - was completely wrong. Semmelweis did not have the correct theory to replace it, but he did recognise the established theory had to be wrong. Even after the direct communicable nature of diseases had been accepted scientists still urged for caution regarding generalisability or the acceptance of germ theory and abandonment of miasma theory: "we are not justified in extending to all contagia what has been proved to be true of some only" (E Buchanan Baxter 1878 Br Med J). And:

In short, the assertion that the contagia of certain communicable diseases are neither soluble, diffusible, nor volatile, is grounded on a substantial basis of observed facts; it is not what Magendie was so fond of stigmatising as a "vue de l'esprit".

All this, however, only goes to show that contagium is particulate; it does not show that it consists of living "germs". It is quite compatible with the belief that the virus of infective inflammation is "simply fibrinous exudation, which, after coagulation, has acquired poisonous properties".

What we see with climate science is a similar phenomena. The WEIGHT of evidence has shifted significantly over the past 10 years. Yet the theory based on the previous weight of evidence has been sustained.