On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added “At a glance” section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a “bump” for our ask. This week features “Is the science settled?“. More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebuttal and to join the discussion in the comment thread there.
At a glance
Science, in all of its aspects, is an ongoing matter. It is based on making progress. For a familiar example, everyone knows that the dinosaurs died out suddenly, 65 million years ago. They vanished from the fossil record. The science is settled on that. But how and why that happened is still a really interesting research area. We know a monster asteroid smacked into the planet at roughly the same time. But we cannot yet conclude with 100% certainty that the asteroid bore sole responsibility for everything that followed.
With regard to climate science, the basis of the greenhouse effect was demonstrated in the 19th Century. The effect on global temperature through doubling the concentration of atmospheric CO2 had been calculated before 1900 and was not far off modern estimates. Raising global temperature causes Earth’s climatic belts to shift polewards. Higher temperatures reduce the amount of land-ice on the planet. That in turn causes sea levels to rise. These are such simple basic physical principles that we can confidently state the science is settled on all of them.
Where the science is less settled is in the fine detail. For example, if you live in a coastal town at a low elevation, you would obviously like to know when it is likely to be affected by rising seas. But that’s difficult.
Difficult because changes in sea levels, variations in the sizes of tides and weather patterns are all factors that operate independently of each other and on different time-scales. We may well know that a big storm-surge hitting the coast at high water on a spring tide is the worst-case scenario, but we don’t know exactly when that might happen in the decades ahead. Too many variables.
Such minute but important details are where the science isn’t settled. Yes we know that if we carry on spewing out tens of billions of tonnes of CO2 every year, things will get really bad. Where and when is the tricky bit. But if climate change was a deadly pathogen, for which there was a vaccine, most of us would get that jab.
In passing, the myth in the box above illustrates a key tactic of misinformation-practitioners, to mix up a whole bunch of talking-points into a rhetorical torrent. The classic example of the practice is the ‘Gish-gallop’.
The term Gish-gallop was coined in reference to a leading American member of the creationist movement, Duane Gish (1921-2013). Gish was well-known for relishing fiery public debates with evolutionists. He perfected the method of presenting multiple arguments in a rapid-fire but scattergun manner so that they are impossible to answer in a structured form. It’s the opposite of scientific discussion. The Gish-galloper appears to the viewers or listeners to be winning the debate. ‘Appears’ is the keyword here, though. If you can recognise a Gish-gallop developing, you can make your own mind up quickly.
Please use this form to provide feedback about this new “At a glance” section. Read a more technical version below or dig deeper via the tabs above!
Click for Further details
In case you’d like to explore more of our recently updated rebuttals, here are the links to all of them:
Myths with link to rebuttal
Short URLs
Ice age predicted in the 1970s
sks.to/1970s
It hasn’t warmed since 1998
sks.to/1998
Antarctica is gaining ice
sks.to/antarctica
CRU emails suggest conspiracy
sks.to/climategate
What evidence is there for the hockey stick
sks.to/hockey
CO2 lags temperature
sks.to/lag
Climate’s changed before
sks.to/past
It’s the sun
sks.to/sun
Temperature records are unreliable
sks.to/temp
The greenhouse effect and the 2nd law of thermodynamics
sks.to/thermo
We’re heading into an ice age
sks.to/iceage
Positives and negatives of global warming
sks.to/impacts
The 97% consensus on global warming
sks.to/consensus
Global cooling – Is global warming still happening?
sks.to/cooling
How reliable are climate models?
sks.to/model
Can animals and plants adapt to global warming?
sks.to/species
What’s the link between cosmic rays and climate change?
sks.to/cosmic
Is Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth accurate?
sks.to/gore
Are glaciers growing or retreating?
sks.to/glacier
Ocean acidification: global warming’s evil twin
sks.to/acid
The human fingerprint in global warming
sks.to/agw
Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming
sks.to/evidence
How do we know more CO2 is causing warming?
sks.to/greenhouse
Explaining how the water vapor greenhouse effect works
sks.to/vapor
Is extreme weather caused by global warming?
sks.to/extreme
How substances in trace amounts can cause large effects
sks.to/trace
How much is sea level rising?
sks.to/sealevel
Is CO2 a pollutant?
sks.to/pollutant
Does cold weather disprove global warming?
sks.to/cold
Do volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans?
sks.to/volcano
How do human CO2 emissions compare to natural CO2 emissions?
sks.to/co2
Climate scientists could make more money in other careers
sks.to/money
How reliable are CO2 measurements?
sks.to/co2data
Do high levels of CO2 in the past contradict the warming effect of CO2?
sks.to/pastco2
What is the net feedback of clouds?
sks.to/cloud
Global warming vs climate change
sks.to/name
Is Mars warming?
sks.to/mars
How the IPCC is more likely to underestimate the climate response
sks.to/underestimat
How sensitive is our climate?
sks.to/sensitivity
Evidence for global warming
sks.to/warming
Has the greenhouse effect been falsified?
sks.to/falsify
Does breathing contribute to CO2 buildup in the atmosphere?
sks.to/breath
What is causing the increase in atmospheric CO2?
sks.to/CO2increase
What is methane’s contribution to global warming?
sks.to/methane
Plants cannot live on CO2 alone
sks.to/plant
Is the CO2 effect saturated?
sks.to/saturate
Greenhouse warming 100 times greater than waste heat
sks.to/waste
How will global warming affect polar bears?
sks.to/bear
The runaway greenhouse effect on Venus
sks.to/venus
What climate change is happening to other planets in the solar system?
sks.to/planets
Has Arctic sea ice returned to normal?
sks.to/arctic
Was Greenland really green in the past?
sks.to/green
Is Greenland gaining or losing ice?
sks.to/greenland
Human activity is driving retreat of Arctic sea ice
sks.to/arcticcycle
The albedo effect and global warming
sks.to/albedo
Does CO2 always correlate with temperature?
sks.to/correlate
Human fingerprints on climate change rule out natural cycles
sks.to/cycle
Global warming and the El Niño Southern Oscillation
sks.to/elnino
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is not causing global warming
sks.to/pdo
Is the science settled?
sks.to/settled
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