Global warming is settled science, but what does that mean?

It’s real, it’s serious and it’s caused by us, but there is still variance to address

One of the regular back and forths between people who accept the science of global warming and climate change and those who are ‘skeptical’ of it is the question of whether it is settled or not. This isn’t helped by the completely reasonable communication around nuanced and complex topics by scientists in which they are careful to say what we don’t know, how much is still to be learned and to caution over-reliance on any single result.

But the science of global warming and climate change is settled in the most part, and the parts where it isn’t are almost entirely a matter of degree not of kind. The relatively minor uncertainty is picked up by the ‘skeptics’ who claim that they are defending science and the conservative post-modernists who claim it is all relative with no authority. The former say things like “no true scientist ever says the science is settled” and “science isn’t based on consensus”. The latter say…