Talk:World Climate Report

message: WCR bills itself as "the definitive and unimpeachable source for what Nature now calls the “mainstream skeptic” point of view." But a search of the Nature archives shows that the phrase "mainstream skeptic" has never appeared in Nature; the words "mainstream" and "skeptic" have appeared in the same article only once, and that article touched only tangentially on global warming. A broader web search shows most of the hits for the term "mainstream skeptic" are from the quotes of this WCR description of itself.  Making up something out of thin air and attributing it to such a widely-known source as Nature can too easily be proven wrong, so I have to assume they didn't do that. What's the story here?  Where did this description come from?   Raymond Arritt 13:23, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know. I really don't care, as it isn't really relevant to the dispute going on above. Perhaps Nature didn't use those exact words, but some other combination of words that conveys the same meaning. "Mainstream skeptic" is certainly pithy. I think the term is accurate though, regardless of who coined it. Geoffrey Allan Plauche 15:04, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  By any conventional standard of  English grammar, putting the term in quotes indicates that Nature used those exact words and not something similar.  A cite for this term would benefit the article, so the reader could understand just what "mainstream skeptic" means (given that in a literal sense the term "mainstream skeptic" is an oxymoron, like "loyal opposition"). At first I thought it meant that their views are typical of skeptics; but upon reflection it could mean that they are skeptical, yet to some extent within the scientific mainstream. The term is confusing and needs a reference. Raymond Arritt 16:30, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Um, so given all these problems, why did you add it in, and why don't you take it out? William M. Connolley 20:18, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, yeah.  But that's how they describe themselves so I thought it should be in there. Raymond Arritt 20:58, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "Mainstream skeptic"?

message: Some 'global warming skeptic think tanks' are simply window dressing for the tobacco lobby, and others, funded by petrodollars and utility dollars, ride the wave for free. None that I have investigated pass the smell test.
The debate on this talk page i.e. "WCR accepting consensus?" and "Mainstream skeptic?" demonstrate that the tactic of confusion works. Who funds WCR? Where does it stand? Who works for it? Is it even scientific, or just a front?
The title of PM's Ph.D. thesis as referenced on Sourcewatch.org seems to have been a position statement against any dangers related to anthropogenic global warming. PM allegedly accepted hundreds of thousands for his post-doctoral research in which he allegedly did things like confusing radians with degrees to disprove global warming. In direct quotes on Sourcewatch, PM seems to imply that humanity could exhaust all available resources including nuclear as well as petroleum and not change the climate appreciably.
It took billions of years for plant life to originate from the primordial soup and sequester all that carbon and sulfur into the ground, producing our oxygen-rich PH neutral cool atmosphere/ocean/soil from a primordial climate that must have been somewhat like Venus in character. We have already burned half the petroleum (oil and methane gas) in the past century, while simultaneously producing millions of methane-excreting intestinal tracts wandering around the feedlots leaving methane-producing dung heaps everywhere.
Current trends lead to the inescapable conclusion that we will exhaust all accessible petroleum and coal within 4 generations. Most of the carbon and sulfur and methane that produced that original hot acidic 'primordial soup' will have been returned to the atmosphere. Skeptics would have us believe that the net result will be benign. A view of humanity from outer space could very well look like a serious or even terminal planetary infection 100 years from now, all potentially depending on what we do about it now.
Climate driven environmental migrations and melting ice caps are already happening. What happens to global temperatures if the algae and plankton dies due to carbonate-driven and sulfate-driven and nitrate-driven acidification, mutation, or some other unforeseen change? One genetically engineered strain of ethanol-producing bacteria that was supposed to solve the energy crisis escaped into a nearby crop and killed it by poisoning the roots with ethanol. If it had made its way into the general climate it could have ended agriculture as we know it.
PM and WCR as far as I can tell ignore the question of fossil fuel use reverting us toward the chemistry of the original primordial soup within the next 4 generations and never bring up the question of what widespread acidification might do to natural climate feedback mechanisms, let alone genetically engineered organisms that could radically alter the climate. Perhaps they just assume that nuclear war will solve the problem by eradicating most of the population and blocking out the sun?
I know that corporate apologists desperately want to prove that there is a credible opposing viewpoint. PM and WCR are about the best they will ever dig up.
The typical skeptic's sole claim to fame is retiring with a Ph.D. and taking money in exchange for hanging obsolete credentials on a corporate hat rack. That makes their contributions to the debate unworthy of note. Period. And your little think tank too.
As the Cybermen say, "Delete! Delete! Delete!"  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.183.26.55 (talk) 09:06, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: notability? or credibility?

message: http://www.worldclimatereport.com/ currently gives me "Affordable, Reliable Web Hosting Solutions"  - someone has forgotten to renew. It seems to have been differently dead all the way back in 2019  William M. Connolley (talk) 16:44, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  As a dodo?