Talk:Climate change denial/Archive 7

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Semi-protect

While I think it's appropriate that this article be unlocked after the long sabbatical, I find it telling that an IP began vandalizing it almost as soon as the block came down. Who here thinks semi-protection would be appropriate for the time being? ~ S0CO^{(talk|contribs)} 04:06, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

There has only been one IP address editing, and they have already been blocked. I don't see any justification for semi-protection at this time. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 04:13, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Opening sentence

The opening sentence is:

Climate change denial describes efforts to counter all or part of the theory of global climate change when those involved are believed to be acting out of vested interests rather than an unbiased evaluation of the scientific data.

This definition leaves undefined who does the believing. The definition of the term is defined in terms of an unspecified group of people.

One way around this is to write:

Climate change denial is a term used to describe efforts to counter all or part of the theory of global climate change by those who believe such efforts to be motivated by vested interests rather than an unbiased evaluation of the scientific data.

There may be a better way, such as specifying who uses this term. - Crosbiesmith (talk) 22:21, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

There may be a simpler way, that makes the article more readable and encyclopedic as well. First off, I really like the angle this article takes, separating rational and honest skepticism from the agenda-oriented black propaganda, but right now it's tone is mush-mouthed and unencyclopedic in the overuse of "believed to" and "alleged" etc. The current intro (and much of the article) suffers from overuse of weasle words. There simply are entities who are acting according to vested interests, they have distorted and misinformed, their impact has been pervasive, and the difference between them and rational scientific skeptics is like day and night.

Case in point (for future reference): the "stink bomb" tactic of propaganda used to propagate the supposed Schulte "study" that was going to prove lack of a consensus. Now, after the fog has cleared, reliable sources can be cited to describe the Schulte "study" as exactly what it has been shown to be, a psuedoscientific "stink bomb" built by Schulte for his buddy Monckton, which was tossed into the "room" just long enough to generate disinformation in the headlines, "news" about the impending publication of the "research" (to create "legitimacy), immediately after which Shulte ran away and to hide. The so called "research data" was never released other than in summary form, what was released was utterly discredited, and any opportunity to understand Schulte's methodology dissapears into the cloud of smoke it was made of, leaving only the "stink" of thousands of remaining Google hits behind. Sadly, most will remember only the headlines that this stink bomb created. Schulte and the Viscount of Monckton were not the first to use this "stink-bomb-and-run" tactic. There have been several notable examples Martin Durkin, etc. etc. and it's still happening today. Legitimate skeptics do not use these black propaganda techniques, but whatever rational skepticism is out there is getting lost in the fog.

So, with the reference case above in mind, back to the article...

(1) let's get rid of as much of the "alleged" and "believed to" stuff as possible. Many cases of conflict-of-interest have been shown and are not in dispute, and they have also been shown to be associated with explicit cases of disinformation.

(2) This article is lacking a section devoted to the defining tactics that provide the distinction between the propagandists of denial and rational scientific skepticism. I will wait for some commentary before (a) removing the weasle words, and (b) beginning work on the section... riverguy42 aka WNDL42 (talk) 17:55, 26 January 2008 (UTC)