I’ve deliberately avoided engaging any of the assertions he made on the subject of climate change because I don’t feel qualified to opine on the issue.

I’ve heard, like we all have, the confident claims that there’s a near-universal scientific consensus on the subject, and yet, without looking into it more deeply, I’m hesitant to just pick up such claims secondhand and endorse them as though I believe them. I’ve had the experience too often of having a mainstream consensus be wrong or questionable. Take, for instance, some of these instances:

• Mainstream scientists told us for decades we should be eating low-fat and avoiding saturated fats, while eating “heart-healthy” vegetable oils, etc. It turned out the truth was the exact opposite, with outright bribery of Harvard scientists by the sugar industry and lots of industry-endorsed junk science put out there for the purpose of duping the public into buying their Frankenfoods.
• We are routinely told that there’s a scientific consensus GMOs are totally safe. The reality is that there are many, many reasons to think otherwise at this point, at least with respect to crops that are modified to be GMOs that are “Roundup-ready.” Here is a PhD and professor emeritus who worked in this field for years addressing the issue. There is obviously a huge lobby promoting the pro-GMO viewpoint and suppressing contrary evidence.
• On the subject of mobile phone radiation (and general EMF dangers), we’re routinely told there’s nothing to worry about, when the real science says otherwise.
• On the subject of the link between vaccines and autism, we are told any such link is totally fictitious, and that only know-nothing, B-list celebrities like Jenny McCarthy are promoting such views. And yet, here, for instance, is a respected MIT scientist making the case for a vaccine-autism link. At the very least, it seems we shouldn’t be dismissing this without a more searching inquiry.

With such examples in mind, I know now not to accept any of these claims of “scientific consensus” on faith anymore. There’s way too much politicized science and corporate corruption of research in our midst for me to trust these people without educating myself more fully, and on the subject of climate change, I just haven’t done that.