Talk:Climate change

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Thoughts

Most people on this site would consider Ethical Skeptic a crank with his vaccine takes, but I’m curious to see what you think of his climate hypothesis. I personally think it’s quite bizarre. Patty Pat 20:51, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

It's a Gish Gallop of technobabble crank! :)

Someone from Reddit already skimmed the article and found several "red flags". It's not uncommon for conspiracy theorists to blatantly misuse statistics and scientific articles, so while there's a few credible papers (mixed among cranks), the conclusion from the mixture of fact and out-there is just bizarre.

I like this article from Ethical Skeptic where it first says it's not a scientist, and then proceeds to bash anyone who isn't a scientist reporting on science that "appeal(s) to authority outside one’s body of current and active expertise". So, I think we can safely take his words as "gospel" and completely ignore everything that it tries to spout on scientific matters, because as its own article puts it, such will likely be very Dunning-Kruger. :) BobJohnson (talk) 22:21, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

I personally feel that TES’ content needs some heavy duty analysis. I kinda got hyper fixated on him from reading his charts explaining how the shots are causing shitloads of issues, but also think of how most charts correlate with COVID waves. Kinda like Edward Dowd. Also think his explanation on how COVID existed since 2017 and how East Asia and Oceania were already immune until Delta and Omicron, is weird. At the same time, he has his own set of skepticism, so trying to rebute him seems to be a vain act. Patty Pat 01:48, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

The problem for this, if you try to do the whole paper, because it is a Gish Gallop, the sheer amount of time it would take to be a pain in the ass. However, pretty quickly, you get to the point where you can tell it is not worth spending time any further.

For instance, at one point the author seems to fail to understand the difference between cumulative CO2 vs. CO2 per year ("If 2.5 years of lower CO2 emissions also causes global temperatures to rise, then what are we doing?") CO2 emissions can vary considerably per year depending on economic activity, but that does not negate the total CO2 (and other global warming gases) already in the air; furthermore, if we are still outputting more CO2 than natural carbon sinks on the Earth can absorb, there still might be an increase in atmospheric CO2 despite the lower CO2 amount during the pandemic. (WEF link for reference for yearly change)(Climate.gov for total PPM) No matter how many fancy words this author uses, it's already starting off on the wrong foot.

Graphs generated by this site have a PIDOOMA quality. Like this one. What the fuck is a China "Hope-Simpson South Season Outbreak"? Is the author talking about Robert Edgar Hope-Simpson, who published reports on diseases between, er, the 1960s and 1990s? Who died in 2003? My guess is the author saw this paper on the role of season in the epidemiology of influenza and threw it into his thoughts without really knowing why. The graph sounds like a fancy implication that the author is conspiring that COVID existed in 2018... or something. Nobody else uses that "Hope-Simpson pathogen" term (really -- Google only shows one link, the author's Twitter), so who the hell knows what the author is meaning here, but that's my guess. I mean, COVID-19 possibly was circulating before it became a pandemic, but not in the way implied.

As noted in the WEF link, CO2 emissions dropped considerably during the COVID-19 pandemic, so one wonders how he PIDOOMAed this graph? The author provided the link, but it's just CO2 observations from one single observatory. That's piss poor data practice in the best case scenario. But even weirder, he chose an observatory on an active volcano. I think it's pretty easy to conjure up why this observatory might be, er, a possible outlier, and not a great choice for any assumption about world CO2 readings. (Note that I'm not checking the data so there may be issues even with that for all I know... the graph is odd, I don't see the point of normalizing PPM to 1976 levels.)

Like I mentioned, since it's a Gish Gallop, one runs into a time issue. Generally Gish Gallops of this sort rely on you being impressed by charts and graphs and technobabble and giant walls of text and not Googling and going "hey, wait a second". It's the age old issue that it's easy to generate bullshit and much harder to do more legitimate things; in fact, it's no surprise that it's a sprawling blot of text because writing succinctly is much tougher. But I imagine if one does a full analysis, one will find an awful lot of poor reasoning and WTFs similar to the above. BobJohnson (talk) 02:56, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

I do think his work on COVID’s origins has serious questions and implications. Mentioning how South Korea, Japan and Australia had flu deaths that were actually COVID (I think he mentions Omicron being that) makes me ask “Wouldn’t epidemiologists have blown the whistle on this?” “Wouldn’t there be officials who know about this?” He’ll have his answers for sure. I think I did ask once, with no reply though. If he sees this, I guess he’ll mention something like Antiwisdom of the crowds, or something. As I’ve said, he seems to have a different form of thinking, and he’ll say something like we’re in denial, or that we don’t understand, or that we’re just plain wrong. Patty Pat 17:05, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Climate change and HAARP

Is there a correlation between HAARP theories and climate change denialism? Like conspiracy theorists claiming that climate change is manmade, but through HAARP instead of fossil fuels, appliance chemicals etc. 🇷🇸 Serbiter (Wort wort wort) 17:39, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

I am currently working on a draft, the person in draft denies Global warming and believes HAARP is used to give the illusion of Climate change ←§ Edward the eight (talk) 18:44, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Climate Change and mental health

Would this be a worthwhile addition to the main page? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4446935/ Antigem (talk)

So uh

It says in the 'What's the limit?' section that 'The International Energy Agency suggests that the window to prevent this from occurring will close by 2020, a view shared by the OECD. So let's get cracking;' As I type this, it is currently 2024, and chances are, it is 2024 as you see this too; We should probably update this section. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 21:54, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Hello? It's been 6 months, and nobody has done anything (I completely forgot about this myself) TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 00:06, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

CAGW

The CAGW snarl term seems to have become... accurate for the actual anthropogenic global warming we are now committed for. Ellenor2000 (talk) 12:27, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

It's still not a term used in peer-reviewed science. It also seems to still be used primarily by fossil fuel-sponsored front groups to create a sense of hopelessness so that burning can continue full-speed ahead. Bongolian (talk) 15:32, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't really understand that argument. "Catastrophic anthropogenic global warming" seems to be exactly what we are facing. Why would it be a snarl word - and why would it imply that we shouldn't do something to stop it?Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 16:32, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

In fact, a google scholar search, shows the word "catastrophic" to be very frequently collocated with "anthropogenic global warming".Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 17:03, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

For what it's worth, climate change denialist (and actual scientist) Judith Curry who is mentioned in the CAGW section took us to task for calling CAGW a snarl word.[1] She quotes some examples of usage without giving citations of alleged wider use, but at least one of them ("Proof positive that CAGW is about power, politics and greed is the fact that") is from fellow-denialist Alan Carlin,[2] who is associated with the denialist organization AEI. Curry cites some international climate organizations, including the IPCC, but does not claim that any of them use the term, just the concept it would seem. Based on a Google search for example, I can confirm that the IPCC does not use the term. Bongolian (talk) 17:28, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

If you say so, then I'll take your word that the IPCC does not use words in that order. But there is no doubt that global warming is caused by human activity and that its results will be catastrophic, so, well, "catastrophic anthropogenic global warming" would seem to a thing.

If frankly seems a bit odd that denialists would refer to "catastrophic anthropogenic global warming" - seeing that that is the exact thing they are denying exists!Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 17:42, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘The two Google searches that I used were: CAGW[3] with 0 results and "catastrophic anthropogenic global warming": 1 result which upon investigation was not correct.[4] Our page on snarl words has a mix of always snarl words (e.g., "homofascism") and contextual snarl words (e.g., anarchist, capitalist). Looking at that top Google results that I get for "catastrophic anthropogenic global warming", I see:

1. Ron Hughes (not-a-scientist, "Climate always has been changeable…") to UK Parliament[5]
2. BobLoblaw's comment at Skeptical Science[6] that links to "Climateball Bingo"[7] — these appear to be non-denialist authors, but also unclear about snarl usage
3. Some Quora dude questioning the 97% consensus[8]
4. Another dude Thayer Watkins, "But enough of the nitwit assertions of the global warming alarmists. Here are the facts. … Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming Never Existed."[9]

Bongolian (talk) 18:11, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Mmmm. Ok, maybe we are talking past each other. I refer again to my google scholar like above in which we see "catastrophic" and "anthropogenic global warming" frequently collocated. It's evident that "catastrophic anthropogenic global warming" is a good way of actually describing global warming - and I would be most surprised if you dispute this. So I'm not really sure what we are debating.

I can only imagine that the denialists refer to it only to object to it. But those who deny "the theory of evolution" also refer to "the theory of evolution" - but the fact that they refer to it in order to argue against it doesn't make "the theory of evolution" a snarl word.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 19:30, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

No, I don't dispute that and I see your point. Do you a suggest changing that section? Bongolian (talk) 19:53, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

I would suggest something along the lines of, "denialists have unsuccessfully attempted to create a snarl word - while inadvertently succeeding in stressing the severity of the problem".Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 05:41, 15 May 2024 (UTC)