remember: the value of an educated opinion is not in the educated authority of the opiner, but in the ability of the educated individual to present a detailed argument. you don't want to reduce educated opinion to the fallacy of an appeal to authority. that would be very unfortunate.

so, i want to refer you to my own posts in this space to clarify that i'm not trying to argue against the science. my point here has never been to impugn or attack anybody working in the field. at all. rather, what i've been trying to do is to point out that these government bodies are often not following the evidence, but rather caving into public pressure (as sometimes articulated by social media) or "common sense" fallacies, and this is being reinforced by the media, which is generally not capable of producing an educated analysis, in a cyclical process of mutual reinforcement. so, you end up with these three sources of ignorance - media, government, the public (as articulated through social media) - feeding off of each other to produce popular but irrational policy.

so, i'm not playing the role of a copernicus or a newton (or a lord monckton.) here, in trying to overturn the established wisdom. rather, i'm playing the role of a joe bauers here in trying to draw attention to what the established wisdom and developing science actually is in the face of staggering mass ignorance from every direction. no, we're obviously not actually that far gone. but, the future is going to look back and laugh at us - if it doesn't end up in worse shape than we're in, or doesn't end up flooded by melting polar ice caps.

if the educated opinion that you're relying on can't present a convincing argument to you, then you should question it, not obey it. as chomsky is famous for stating in his arguments against post-modernism, and i paraphrase, if you have a cogent point and understand it properly and are convinced that it's valid then the best way to prove as much is to condense it into language that a child is capable of understanding. if you can't do that, then you don't have a valid point, or you don't understand it, or it isn't cogent.