Quote Originally Posted by Crocodile View Post
... But as soon as you formed your opinion based on your experience that was at hand at that time, it's now rock and solid. Nothing could ever shatter that. Alas, that's not the way a scientist (Political or otherwise) should approach the reality. Ask it-ogo.
In the sciences you will encounter concepts, experiments, theories etc that range from extremely highly reliable, highly predictive, to ones that are rather less so.

X-ray crystallography, mass spectrometry, Newtonian mechanics/physics, wave and particle physics etc. If you believe any real scientist has much doubt about many of these things and their results, you're shooting in the dark. If you bring up any evidence or experiments contesting any of this stuff, you're discussion may be received politely, or perhaps not, but it will almost certainly not sway anyone, and would probably be laughed off the stage, like some a flat earther Ludite. On the other hand there are new theories, new experiments, new results that are in a grey area, where there is a lot of controversy. In these areas, scientists may behave as you suggest, reserving opinion until sufficient data has accumulated, and a sufficient theoretical framework that has some predictive capability has emerged.

The point is, that scientist have some opinions that are rather unshakable and rock solid, and are not as reserved as you believe they ought to be, while in other grey areas they will be. In other words, some experiences are capable of engendering rock solid opinions, because they have massive predictive ability.

...and from another thread
Quote Originally Posted by Crocodile
It's not the consumption that's doing the damage to the environment, but in order to keep up with the consumption and the population growth we need a better technology. Compare the way we produce the food these days (farming) with what we used to do in the Paleolithic Age - hunting. It wasn't renewable back than and it's renewable now. As a result, we adversely affect the environment MUCH LESS (in this respect alone) than those guys who allegedly live in harmony with the Nature. And there are many more of us too. Viva to the technogaianism!
With this, you have skewered your credibility.