* KLC Lewis wrote, On 4/4/2007 7:10 PM:
"Jeff" wrote in message
. ..

When I was a wee little lass in Elementary school, yea, even when I was
older and graduated from High School, the "concensus view" was that there
was, once upon a time, a critter called a "Brontosaurus," who lived in
marshes and dragged his tail. It was also the concensus view that this
critter, and those like him, died out because they "got too big."

No. That's a cute story, but fantasy. Although there were much
speculation as to what might have caused the extinctions, there was
certainly no consensus on the topic. To quote the Encyclopedia
Britannica from 1973:

"What caused this sudden extinction? The answer is not at all clear.
Temperature changes, epidemics, eating of dinosaur eggs by early
mammals, have all been suggested but are far from satisfactory."

Perhaps in your school system the teachers made up fairy tales; that
could explain a lot.



The "concensus view" in science changes almost faster than peer-reviewed
papers can be published. I see no reason to believe that the concensus view
regarding Global Climate Change will be carved in stone any time soon.


I don't disagree, but it doesn't change the fact that there is a
consensus view.

Actually, I have trouble thinking of a case of physical science that
got totally reversed in recent years. I'm sure that folks will come
up with a few, but even such radical theories as Relativity didn't
overthrow the previous science, they just augment it in certain domains.