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Frequently asked questions

To view an explanation to the answer, click the [show] link to the right of the question.

Q1: Why is this article not called "climate change skepticism"?

A1: Because, while climate change deniers claim to exhibit skepticism, their statements and actions indicate otherwise. The evidence for man-made global warming is compelling enough that those who have been presented with this evidence and choose to come to a different conclusion are indeed denying a well-established scientific theory, not being skeptical of it. This is why a consensus has emerged among scientists on the matter. For example, two surveys found that 97% of climate scientists agree that humans are the main cause of global warming.^[1]^[2] According to Peter Christoff, skepticism is, in fact, essential for good science, and "Those scientists who test some uncertain part of the theories and models of climate change with ones of their own are, in a weak sense, "sceptics"." By contrast, since the scientific debate about man-made global warming is over, those who argue that it isn't or that global warming is caused by some natural process, according to Christoff, do not use valid scientific counter-evidence.^[3] Similarly, David Robert Grimes wrote that "The nay-sayers insist loudly that they're "climate sceptics", but this is a calculated misnomer – scientific scepticism is the method of investigating whether a particular hypothesis is supported by the evidence. Climate sceptics, by contrast, persist in ignoring empirical evidence that renders their position untenable."^[4]

Q2: Is this article a POVFORK?

A2: This argument has been raised many times over the years with regard to this page. For example, in 2007 the page was nominated for deletion, and the nominator referred to the article as a "Hopelessly POV fork of global warming controversy." However, this argument was roundly debunked, with User:Count Iblis perhaps providing the best explanation for why: "This article is clearly not a POV fork of the global warming controversy page. In that article the focus is on the arguments put forward by the skeptics (and the rebuttals). In this article the focus is on the "denial industry". We cannot just dump in this article what would be POV in the other article. Of course there may be POV problems with this article, but then POV disputes are not a valid argument for deletion."^[5]

Q3: Does the use of "denial" in this article's title condone the comparison of global warming skeptics/deniers to Holocaust deniers?

A3: This article takes no more of a position with regard to this comparison than the Fox News Channel article does about whether Fox is biased--that is, none whatsoever. In fact, as of 25 March 2014, the article's lead states, "Some commentators have criticized the use of the phrase climate change denial as an attempt to delegitimize 'skeptical' views and portray them as immoral." Thus the "skeptics'" argument against referring to them as "deniers" is indeed included in this article. Moreover, use of the term "denier" far predates the Holocaust.^[6]

Q4: Is there really a scientific consensus on global warming?

A4: The IPCC findings of recent warming as a result of human influence are explicitly recognized as the "consensus" scientific view by the science academies of all the major industrialized countries. No scientific body of national or international standing presently rejects the basic findings of human influence on recent climate. This scientific consensus is supported by 97% of publishing climate scientists, although there are a few who reject this.^[2]

Q5: Why does it matter whether or not there is a "consensus" among scientists? Isn't "consensus" inherently unscientific? Wasn't there a scientific consensus about many other ideas that have since been disproven, such as the earth being the center of the universe until Galileo came along?

A5: The answers to the above questions follow in the same order as the questions:

1. Because a "consensus" indicates that scientists with expertise in the relevant fields are in general agreement about some topic, such that they often refer to it as a "fact" (though technically nothing in science is ever proven with the 100% level of certainty necessary for it to be considered a fact). There is, for example, a consensus that smoking causes cancer, which is widely considered a fact.^[7]
2. No; in fact, it is essential to the progress of science, since scientific discoveries are made based on what the consensus of scientists established before them.^[8]
3. This argument is a form of the association fallacy often called the "Galileo Gambit." The best debunking of this argument may have been provided by Carl Sagan: "The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."^[9]

References

^ Anderegg, William R L; Prall, James W.; Harold, Jacob; Schneider, Stephen H. (2010). "Expert credibility in climate change". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 107 (27): 12107–9. Bibcode:2010PNAS..10712107A. doi:10.1073/pnas.1003187107. PMC 2901439. PMID 20566872.
^ ^a ^b Doran, Peter T.; Zimmerman, Maggie Kendall (January 20, 2009). "Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change" (PDF). EOS. 90 (3): 22–23. Bibcode:2009EOSTr..90...22D. doi:10.1029/2009EO030002.
^ Christoff, Peter (9 July 2007). "Climate change is another grim tale to be treated with respect - Opinion". Melbourne: Theage.com.au. Retrieved 19 March 2010.
^ Denying climate change isn't scepticism – it's 'motivated reasoning', Opinion column by David Robert Grimes, The Guardian, 5 February 2014.
^ AFD Diff, 7 August 2007.
^ Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
^ Uri, Shwed; Bearman, Peter (December 2010). "The Temporal Structure of Scientific Consensus Formation". American Sociological Review. 75 (6): 817–840. Retrieved 18 December 2010.
^ On Scientific Consensus
^ Broca's Brain, p. 64

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Denial Networks

The denial networks section is more about public responses to climate change, and not on the various networks supporting climate change denial; there is discussion of these in the History section. I suggest most of the Denial Networks section can go to the section on Public Opinion Xcia0069 (talk) 18:34, 13 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The extent that Heartland Institute is a main part of the climate denial network is not acknowledged. There is one section currently on a free climate denial pamphlet they sent educators but for decades Heartland has provided most elected officials in the United States with free climate denial newsletters, pamphlets, books, and videos. Most of the annual campaigns to influence lawmakers have been larger than the 200,000 booklets sent for that science educator campaign. In addition, there are annual conferences and occasional media blitzes. Elemming (talk) 10:18, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 5 September 2018

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Factual error - lack of source Under Section: Arguments and positions on global warming

Proposition: please change X to Y. Current Statement (X): “While water vapor is a greenhouse gas, the scientific consensus is the very short atmospheric lifetime of water vapor (about 10 days) compared that of CO2 (hundreds to thousands of years) means that CO2 is the primary driver of increasing temperatures.” [no citation]

Change to (Y): “While water vapor is a greenhouse gas, the scientific consensus is the very short atmospheric lifetime of water vapor (about 9 days) compared that of CO2 (five to hundreds of years) suggesting that CO2 is the primary driver of increasing temperatures <https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/016.htm>.”

Additional reasoning: Aside from discrepancies with data, the original statement may give readers the impression that the atmospheric lifetime of CO2 is at least greater than 100 years, which could cause confusion with scientific data regarding carbon deposition and ocean acidification. The original statement could suggest that current CO2 deposition and ocean acidification arises from pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 alone, which evidence suggests otherwise.

2600:1017:B009:D7C6:18A8:18F0:5E89:B4EF (talk) 00:50, 5 September 2018 (UTC)2600:1017:B009:D7C6:18A8:18F0:5E89:B4EF (talk) 00:50, 5 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That's a long PRIMARY source, does it mention water vapor someplace? I didn't notice it on a quick read through. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 01:12, 5 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The specific cite above (<https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/016.htm>) doesn't even mention water (bar a reference to seawater). Not the cite you are looking for? I'd be surprised if the IPCC don't have something about that somewhere. --PLUMBAGO 08:07, 5 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

CO2 lifetimes are complex; but the effective lifetime certainly is greater than 100 years, as the text says, and our anon objects to. See e.g. www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/03/how-long-will-global-warming-last/ William M. Connolley (talk) 08:44, 5 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Something giving the current effective lifetime would certainly be better. I am a bit concerned by the posters idea that gases stay in the atmosphere for the duration of the lifetime and only then start being absorbed int the sea for instance. Is this a common type of misconception? Dmcq (talk) 10:04, 5 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. - FlightTime (open channel) 22:15, 12 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 5 September 2018

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

In reference to previous edit (X): “While water vapor is a greenhouse gas, the scientific consensus is the very short atmospheric lifetime of water vapor (about 10 days) compared that of CO2 (hundreds to thousands of years) means that CO2 is the primary driver of increasing temperatures; water vapour acts as a feedback, not a forcing <111>.”

Source added in updated page is sufficient. My apologies, as the water vapor value in the last edit request was not found in the source page I linked - valid points raised by editors - this edit is to address the CO2 residence time listed.

Suggested Change to (Y): “While water vapor is a greenhouse gas, the scientific consensus is the very short atmospheric lifetime of water vapor (about 10 days) compared that of CO2 (decades to thousands of years) means that CO2 is the primary driver of increasing temperatures; water vapour acts as a feedback, not a forcing <111>.”

NOTE: The updated source provided suggests CO2 residence times of decades to centuries.

Updated Source 111 - http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-vapour-feedback-or-forcing/

The linked Wikipedia Page: Greenhouses Gases - suggests decades to thousands of years - “Carbon dioxide has a variable atmospheric lifetime, and cannot be specified precisely.[32] The atmospheric lifetime of CO2 is estimated of the order of 30–95 years.[33] This figure accounts for CO2 molecules being removed from the atmosphere by mixing into the ocean, photosynthesis, and other processes. However, this excludes the balancing fluxes of CO2 into the atmosphere from the geological reservoirs, which have slower characteristic rates.[34] Although more than half of the CO2 emitted is removed from the atmosphere within a century, some fraction (about 20%) of emitted CO2 remains in the atmosphere for many thousands of years.[35] [36] [37] “

The IPCC report (listed in the previous edit) provides a range of 5 to 200 years for anthropogenically sourced CO2

NOTE: I declare no ideological motivations to these edits. I am a scientist/communicator and a woman listed this discrepancy on Wikipedia as evidence of Wikipedia being unreliable. I merely hope to contribute to continued improvement of a very useful site. 2601:18A:C681:69F1:B8A4:9745:11F0:DDCC (talk) 15:08, 5 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I am concerned that what you want to put in is both too detailed and not accurate enough for an article about climate change denial. We should I think be putting figures for the half life of the increase in CO2 rather than some figure which talks about it disappearing into the sea and other CO2 coming out and anyway the sea might get overloaded etc etc. We are not concerned about the fate of individual molecules - that is the concern of modelers. We are interested in the overall effect in this article. Dmcq (talk) 15:45, 5 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thinking again it is a bit difficult as half life implies an exponential decay and that is not at all what happens with CO2. Perhaps we need a Wikipedia page on this particular business, or is there one already? Dmcq (talk) 15:59, 5 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for responding. There is a page relating to this matter, entitled “Carbon Dioxide in Earth’s Atmosphere.” I merely wish to change the information in the parentheses from (hundreds to thousands of years) to (decades to thousands of years). An appropriate page is already linked to the page and together with the current source just listed yesterday, I believe these are sufficient for those who seek further clarification on both water vapor and CO2 in the atmosphere. The suggested edit simply corrects a discrepancy with other Wikipedia pages (e.g. Greenhouse Gases) and linked sources. 130.132.173.41 (talk) 01:02, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't a page for going into the science, so perhaps it would be best to simply delete the years and state the actual consensus which is that CO2 has a much longer term effect. At the rate this is going you'll have people sticking in more irrelevant things like the effects of other gases. Well they are relevant but do we really need all that here? Dmcq (talk) 07:40, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The real problem as I see it is that yes you have a person complaining about one set of figures and pointing to a place that says another, but really the figures only have a meaning in the context of quite a bit of explanation, they refer to different things and don't really mean anything easily understandable without a good feeling for how change works as in a differential equation. It is a problem but just sticking in different figures is not a real solution. So I think a general result is better with a link to Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere for more. Dmcq (talk) 07:52, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In fact I see that article even does not go into it in any detail, so it definitely doesn't belong here. Dmcq (talk) 07:56, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'd agree - the topic of CO2 residence time isn't a simple one, and a single figure (or even a range) isn't especially helpful. While it is a primary research source, so perhaps not wholly useful here, this article (which I believe is freely available) might help: Archer, D. (2005), Fate of fossil fuel CO2 in geologic time, J. Geophys. Res., 110, C09S05, doi:10.1029/2004JC002625.

A few pertinent quotes from it are:

"For the best guess cases, ..., we expect that 17–33% of the fossil fuel carbon will still reside in the atmosphere 1 kyr from now, decreasing to 10–15% at 10 kyr, and 7% at 100 kyr. The mean lifetime of fossil fuel CO2 is about 30–35 kyr."

"In fairness, if the fate of anthropogenic carbon must be boiled down into a single number for popular discussion, then 300 years is a sensible number to choose, because it captures the behavior of the majority of the carbon."

"A better approximation of the lifetime of fossil fuel CO2 for public discussion might be ‘‘300 years, plus 25% that lasts forever.’’"

Hope this is helpful, --PLUMBAGO 08:05, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The lack of a good lifetime for CO2 is a problem. Ideally, we'd just delete the number. But then we'd be left with "much longer for CO2" which is somewhat unsatisfactory, or so it seemed to me. On reflection, no-one is going to use this page as a source for the CO2 lifetime, and "hundreds" is both vague and fairly true, so I tried just deleting "thousands" to see if that looked OK William M. Connolley (talk) 08:58, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. - FlightTime (open channel) 22:16, 12 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Copied from tabacco lobbyists?

This page states "This approach to downplay the significance of climate change were copied from tobacco lobbyists" and it does this without citing a source. Is there a basis for this claim? I know what the tobacco lobbyists did, and I know that some people have said they are similar (in that they are both trying to lie to the public), but this claim that they copied their approach from the tobacco lobbyists claims quite a bit more than that. I am wondering if there is a source for this claim or it should be removed. -Obsidi (talk) 17:49, 13 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Same people, same organisations: Frederick Seitz, Fred Singer, The Heartland Institute, Institute of Economic Affairs...

Merchants of Doubt is the usual source for that connection. --Hob Gadling (talk) 19:36, 13 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As above, this is all documented in painstaking detail by Oreskes. Guy (Help!) 09:27, 16 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Typical leftypedia biased article with an agenda

Tell us o supreme climate scientists, where is the 40 degrees by age 40 (40 by 40) you predicted twenty six years ago. I am over 40 now, and last I looked Sydney was not 40 degrees every day. What a massive fail climage change is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 175.34.201.158 (talk) 08:19, 20 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It wouldn't have been possible to make that accurate a prediction and I very much doubt anyone would say that it would be that even during Winter. But perhaps you should read the weather report for 2017 in Sydney [1] where you'll see that there were temperatures of 40°C or more for up to 15 days in parts of Sydney, and higher in the surrounding area with a record of 47°C in Richmond. I don't believe there are political activists altering those records! Dmcq (talk) 09:03, 20 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

p.s. talk page is for discussing possible changes to articles, you didn't give a change you wanted . And sources for any information like for instance the weather report I cited are also very desirable. Dmcq (talk) 09:06, 20 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

So you are saying the three university lecturors who came to our year twelve school of over a thousand and gave a talk on the subject and made those statements were basically lying? Well I will call the university and see if they can be deregistered for lying to prospective students, if they have not retired already. For the record, they told us EVERY day would likely be over 40 in Sydney. What a bunch of lunatics. Time to boot the entire climate science pseudoscientist body out of university and recognise it for what it is; organised religion.

[Anderegg-1] Anderegg, William R L; Prall, James W.; Harold, Jacob; Schneider, Stephen H. (2010). "Expert credibility in climate change". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 107 (27): 12107–9. Bibcode:2010PNAS..10712107A. doi:10.1073/pnas.1003187107. PMC 2901439. PMID 20566872.

[DZ_EOS_2009-2] Doran, Peter T.; Zimmerman, Maggie Kendall (January 20, 2009). "Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change" (PDF). EOS. 90 (3): 22–23. Bibcode:2009EOSTr..90...22D. doi:10.1029/2009EO030002.

[Christoff-3] Christoff, Peter (9 July 2007). "Climate change is another grim tale to be treated with respect - Opinion". Melbourne: Theage.com.au. Retrieved 19 March 2010.

[4] Denying climate change isn't scepticism – it's 'motivated reasoning', Opinion column by David Robert Grimes, The Guardian, 5 February 2014.

[5] AFD Diff, 7 August 2007.

[6] Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap

[Shwed_and_Bearman_2010-7] Uri, Shwed; Bearman, Peter (December 2010). "The Temporal Structure of Scientific Consensus Formation". American Sociological Review. 75 (6): 817–840. Retrieved 18 December 2010.

[8] On Scientific Consensus

[9] Broca's Brain, p. 64

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

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Revision as of 09:07, 20 September 2018 edit Dmcq (talk \| contribs) Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers 29,599 edits →‎Typical leftypedia biased article with an agenda: fix ← Previous edit		Revision as of 11:45, 23 September 2018 edit undo 175.34.201.158 (talk) →‎Typical leftypedia biased article with an agenda Next edit →
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	:p.s. talk page is for discussing possible changes to articles, you didn't give a change you wanted . And sources for any information like for instance the weather report I cited are also very desirable. [[User:Dmcq\|Dmcq]] ([[User talk:Dmcq\|talk]]) 09:06, 20 September 2018 (UTC)		:p.s. talk page is for discussing possible changes to articles, you didn't give a change you wanted . And sources for any information like for instance the weather report I cited are also very desirable. [[User:Dmcq\|Dmcq]] ([[User talk:Dmcq\|talk]]) 09:06, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

			::So you are saying the three university lecturors who came to our year twelve school of over a thousand and gave a talk on the subject and made those statements were basically lying? Well I will call the university and see if they can be deregistered for lying to prospective students, if they have not retired already. For the record, they told us EVERY day would likely be over 40 in Sydney. What a bunch of lunatics. Time to boot the entire climate science pseudoscientist body out of university and recognise it for what it is; organised religion.