Contrarian work does fine if it's solid and based in reality. It's just that most contrarian work is crap and it's hard to get funding for junk science. You'd have a hard time finding funding for work on phrenology. Doesn't mean it's being artificially suppressed.
> He later became known as a skeptic on climate change, publishing the book Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters, which was widely condemned for promoting climate denial.
“Climate Denial” is shorthand for anyone who is contrarian to the consensus, no? Or can you provide a single person who opposes the consensus who isn’t labeled the same?
Regardless. It seems like it's less a detailed breakdown of the science and more a pedantic argument about the meaning of science being settled. There's virtually no expert who would argue we know everything there is to know about climate science so it seems the entire book is a refutation of a straw man.
The disconnect seems to be that the political apparatus seems to characterize these “no expert who would argue we know everything there is to know about climate science” folks as “experts who argue that we know everything there is to know about climate science” folks.
Hence the whole “settled science” BS talking point.
I'd argue the much bigger problem is the those who argue we don't know enough to take serious action on climate change. Uncertainty about how monsoons are going to react or when the east antarctic might begin to shed mass aren't serious enough uncertainties to justify continuing this out of control experiment with the thermal and chemical properties of the atmosphere and oceans.
There's no time to spend dealing with the many, many contrarians out there. Wikipedia is a good smell test. For climate I believe one source: https://www.ipcc.ch/
If a legitimate study finds some results that are contrary to the mainstream it will end up in the ipcc. Like the study that said the antarctic was (until recently) gaining mass. Most studies that are contrarian are just garbage though. Either the product of idealoges or mercenaries working for the fossil fuel industry.
