Ten years ago, on this day, September 18, 2013, a bunch of sad denialists did their sad denial …
The NIPCC’s fourth report, entitled Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science, was published
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 398ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that they were keeping on keeping on with their ludicrous cherry-picked data and whataboutery. It had become part of their social identity and the echo chamber kept echoing. They were presenting stuff at their own “Heartland Institute” meetings and so forth but really by this time it was getting a bit pathetic.
What I think we can learn from this is that old white men will keep on being embarrassing long beyond the point at which it has become embarrassing
What happened next – the efforts at denial have mostly now transformed into what is called lukewarmism, or attribution/impact denialism. There’s less denial about the planet warming, but there is denial about the consequences of the warming or the causes of the warming.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs