Skeptical Science Forum


2010-08-31 13:29:04	Taxonomy suggestions
James Wight jameswight@southernphone.com... 58.105.164.221	In the past I’ve made lots of suggestions on how to improve the site’s increasingly complicated taxonomy of skeptic arguments. John said to feel free to look over the list of arguments again, so I have. Here’s what I’ve come up with: Duplicate arguments Isn’t “Increase in temperature is less than instrument error” the same argument as “Mercury thermometers can’t measure within tenths of a degree”? “NOAA inflated Great Lakes temperatures” and “NOAA-16 satellite temperatures degraded” are also the same argument as each other. “It snowed somewhere” is not much different to “Record snowfall disproves global warming”. Isn’t “It’s geomagnetic activity” the same as “It’s magnetic poles”? And wasn’t Monckton just quoting Lindzen and Choi on low climate sensitivity; aren’t they the same argument? Suggested name change I recommend “1/3 of IPCC is not peer-reviewed” be renamed “1/3 of IPCC AR4 is not peer-reviewed” for clarification. Suggested category changes I suggest placing “Galileo broke the consensus” and “Global warming theory isn’t falsifiable” under “The science isn’t settled”. Also, “It’s an anti-capitalist political myth” doesn’t necessarily relate to people making money – perhaps it could become a category of its own, including “People are making money”, “AGW is religion”, “It’s environmentalist propaganda”, and “It’s a plot to set up a one-world government”. Perhaps “Second law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory” should be a subargument of “Greenhouse effect has been falsified”? And “Venus is hot due to internal heating” and “Venus is hot due to a collision” could be recategorised under “Venus doesn’t have a runaway greenhouse effect”. Similarly, “Mars is cold despite all the CO2” probably belongs under “CO2 effect is weak”. I think the “Climate’s changed before” category is getting a bit unwieldy; maybe it could be recategorised. I recommend that contemporary events be kept together. So “Greenland was green” probably belongs under “Medieval Warm Period was warmer”, while “Greenland was warmer in 1940” probably belongs under “Arctic was warmer in 1940”. “We’re coming out of an ice age” should be separate from “We’re coming out of the Little Ice Age”, since the Little Ice Age was not really an ice age. “Glaciers have been receding since the 1800s” and perhaps “Thomas Jefferson wrote about warming winters” probably belong under the Little Ice Age. I think “Wine grew in England in Roman times” belongs under “It was warmer in the Roman Warm Period”. Isn’t “It’s land use” more an argument against the temperature record than a hypothesized cause of global warming (analogous to “It’s Urban Heat Island effect”)? Don’t “Growing forests” and “Natural weathering” both belong under “Carbon cycle amplification less than thought”? And finally, “Greenland has only lost a tiny fraction of its ice mass” could become a sub-argument of “Greenland ice sheet won’t collapse”.
2010-09-22 01:09:10	Another duplicate argument
James Wight jameswight@southernphone.com... 58.105.164.221	There are now two separate arguments called “It’s a 1500-year cycle” and “It’s part of a 1500-year cycle” – this seems redundant. I suggest that the unused one be deleted.
2010-09-23 20:21:42	Fixed 1500 duplicate
John Cook john@skepticalscience... 121.222.93.62	I've renamed "It's part of 1500 year cycle" to "It's a natural cycle" and sometime we'll populate that with a rebuttal to the general natural cycle argument. At that point, I'll make 1500 year cycle a sub-argument to "it's a natural cycle" to make the taxonomy make more sense James, appreciate all the other taxonomy comments and will get to these asap. They haven't gone unnoticed :-)
2010-10-03 14:29:59	"The science is not settled" duplicate argument
James Wight jameswight@southernphone.com... 58.105.164.221	Someone has added a new argument called "The Science Is Not Settled" under "800 peer-reviewed papers are skeptical of AGW". This is obviously a duplicate of "The science isn't settled". Also, the one link that is listed for the duplicate is some forum I can't access.
2010-10-21 23:22:56	Humidity argument not appearing on argument list
James Wight jameswight@southernphone.com... 220.238.207.27	For some reason, the newly added rebuttal to "Humidity is falling" is not showing up on the argument list. I think this is because it is categorised under "Negative feedbacks will stabilise climate", which does not yet have a rebuttal.
2010-11-03 17:23:10	Politics taxonomy
James Wight jameswight@southernphone.com... 220.238.207.27	I've also made suggestions about the taxonomy of the "It's too hard" and "It's too late arguments" in this thread.
2010-11-07 21:36:21	Arguments missing from list
James Wight jameswight@southernphone.com... 58.104.126.59	I've just realised that "Humidity is falling" appears on the numerical list but not the taxonomy list. Meanwhile, "CO2 only causes 35% of global warming" appears on the taxonomy list but not the numerical list.
2010-12-01 23:54:11	Renewables and ice sheet losses
James Wight jameswight@southernphone.com... 112.213.142.173	The rebuttal “Renewables can’t provide baseload power” has gone live but is not listed on the arguments lists. Also it seems to me that “Greenland is gaining ice” should be a subargument of “Ice sheet losses are overestimated”, not the other way around.
2010-12-02 21:17:45	Spam links in "Ice age predicted in the 70s"
James Wight jameswight@southernphone.com... 112.213.142.173	Just now I was going through the links page for "Ice age predicted in the 70s" looking for a particular link (which I found), and I happened to notice two links to "cameronisawesome.com" and "cameronbradleyisawesome.com". Both links are titled "test".