There is a distressing commonality when discussing climate science lately: many people skip past the data and arguments offered by a skeptic and ask the question, “Are you a climatologist?” The implication, sometimes flatly stated, is that, if you are not, then you have no business offering a negative opinion on the state of “the” science.

It is distressing because I repeatedly have to point out that it is a logical fallacy that because a person is not a climatologist their skeptical argument is therefore false. If you like labels, this fallacious retort is called the Appeal to Authority. Each argument must be assessed on its merits and cannot be dismissed because the person offered it does not meet a certain credentialing standard. Climate theory arguments from non-experts cannot be banned or forbidden tout court.

Being open to arguments from non-specialists in other fields has meant that honest scientists have had to deal with the ravings of cranks and bizarre, pointless, and irrelevant theories. But tough luck. Every physicist gets a steady stream of letters and emails from people claiming to have finally solved zero point energy, every mathematician has to read missives that have uncovered the secret proof for squaring the circle. The progress of physics and math have not been appreciably slowed by this nonsense. And every now and then, rarely, comes a paper from a nobody in a patent office or a hand-written theorem from some unknown Indian kid whose hobby is playing with numbers, and entirely new avenues of thought are opened.