I hear that the "Science" involving anthropogenic global warming is "settled". Is any other Science "settled"?

Question

The Earth is not flat but the Continents now move, the Poles shift and the Magnetic Poles switch.
Newtonian Physics has been superceeded and Einstein wasn't quite right.
Darwinian Evolution has evolved into the Modern Synthesis and Lamarckism seems to have some place.
If it is Science surely it must be subject to investigation, refinement and alteration?

Answer 1

Gravity is a property of mass. That issue is largely "settled," even though Einstein extended Newton's equations.

Plate tectonics is settled, even though new discoveries will continue to refine geophysical properties of sea floor spreading, subduction, and orogeny.

"Modern synthesis" does not actually undermine evolution.

The fact that human activity contributes to global warming is all that is settled. We know the effect is somewhere between 70% and 90% of the current global warming trend. What isn't settled is what are the best steps to reduce our environmental impact. What compromises ought we make? Or should we just kiss off future generations in the name of present economic expedience?

Answer 2

All knowledge is based on hierarchies of inherently untestable hypotheses and assumptions.
For a time any area of science could appear settled, until one of those hypotheses or assumptions is discredited or simply changed a little by further study.
The difference with AGW is the poor nature of the assumptions and hypotheses in the first place. They are in effect circular. Only the broadest of the assumptions has consensus.
Naturally the science is not settled, it cannot be. The causality of AGW is an hypothesis to explain GW. It assumes that no other hypotheses can exist. Clearly they can and indeed some have been put forward.
The real problem is that because of the way AGW is stated only one counter example is needed to discredit it.

Answer 3

Interesting that you started with an issue that is 'settled' in the political arena, but not the scientific. Those who intensely want global government are putting such intense pressure on global warming science to produce the answer they want, so they can coerce others into submitting to global authority, that it's difficult for science to present an unbiased view of what the evidence does and does not say about global warming.

Science as a process is 'settled'. Science as a body of knowledge is always changing as we learn more and have better technology to do more experiments.

Answer 4

Science, per se, is a 'living thing'.
When science becomes static, it becomes dead.
One of the tenets of the scientific method is to _change the theory when the facts do not fit!_
(a thing that the global warmingists will not do).
That also goes for evolutionists, creationists, and any other 'ist' that you can think up.
If one makes a religion of science, then science becomes unchangeable, then dies.
It would seem that such has happened here in the world of the 'greens'.

Answer 5

I don't think we'll see any new developments in the thermometer. Thermometer science is pretty much settled, so don't expect scientists to suddenly reject the numbers that thermometers around the world report.

Answer 6

"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement.
The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."
-Niels Bohr