Everyone in the world is currently whipped into a frenzy over either the undeniable truth of climate change or the obvious fallaciousness of it. 

Most major news outlets behave as if it is already an accepted fact. Except some are pretty sure it is either not happening, or else if it is happening it is part of a natural cycle of some kind and therefore is no cause for concern.

The people who dispute climate science have a wide variety of objections. They generally find some fault with the data itself, or else offer counter-evidence to the theory of global warming. After this, however, many proceed to draw conclusions like this:

“There are serious flaws in this Climate Science. These flaws are so widespread as to indicate that the entire thing is in fact a conspiracy to redistribute wealth and gain greater control over people. Global Warming/Climate Change is a kind of Reichstag Fire for anti-capitalist, totalitarian regimes.”

Of course, the counter-argument is that all of these ideas are being secretly funded by oil companies who are trying to prevent the loss of revenue. If that’s true, the best thing to do would be to encourage the Climate Change questioners to spend more and more effort on campaigning against oil company regulation, so that they will eventually run out of money and then this will all be a moot point.

Really, though, my point is that there’s no way for a layman to be sure about it. Yes, we’re told that an overwhelming consensus that there is man-made global warming exists, but the other side responds that any source which says this is biased in favor of the Socialist conspiracy. The response to this is that the skeptics are taking money from “Big Oil”.

So, how can I be sure? More importantly, how can any non-climatologist on either side be sure?